Trump to meet PM of Pakistan, a country he once called a terrorist safe haven

The TOI correspondent from Washington: US President Donald Trump is meeting Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in the Oval Office on Thursday, advancing ties with a country he described in his first term as a terrorist safe-haven that has long conned America.

The White House has listed Trump’s meeting with Sharif for 4.30 pm EST (2 am IST) after bilateral meetings and lunch with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The Pakistani prime minister buttonholed Trump on the sidelines of his meeting with eight Islamic-Arab countries in New York on Tuesday, and a 36-second video clip shared by Pakistan’s ministry of foreign affairs showed him emphatically making some point with his foreign minister Ishaq Dar by his side.

Trump’s meeting with Pakistan’s civilian leadership comes after two back-to-back visits to US by the country’s army chief and de facto military ruler Asim Munir, including a White House luncheon in which he proposed a Nobel Prize for the US president for ending the war Pakistan triggered with India with a terrorist attack in Pahalgam. The presidential lunch, unprecedented for a foreign military chief, signaled a remarkable US pivot that, according to several accounts, was facilitated by private American business interests in cryptocurrency tied to the Trump family.

Pakistan has also pledged to throw open its purported mineral wealth to exploration by the US, which faces a shortage of critical rare earths on which China has a stranglehold. Earlier this month, the Missouri-based US Strategic Metals (USSM), specialising in the extraction, recycling, and mining of critical minerals such as cobalt, nickel, copper, and rare earth elements from lithium-ion batteries, inked a $500 million MoU with Pakistan’s National Logistics Corporation for recycling and mining these assets.

In addition to the sweeteners, Pakistan also provides the gateway to the renewed US interest in Afghanistan, specifically retaking the Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, which President Trump has identified as vital to US national interests because of its proximity to China’s nuclear assets. While there is little likelihood that Pakistan will ditch its higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, sweeter than honey friend and patron that has long patronised it, weaning Islamabad away from Beijing has long been a Washington objective that has taken on urgency with China’s rise as the main US adversary.

None of this was on the horizon during Trump’s first term when he underscored Pakistan’s perfidy and its ties to terrorism. "The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!" he said in a January 1, 2018, post. On November 19 the same year, he said, "We no longer pay Pakistan the $Billions because they would take our money and do nothing for us, Bin Laden being a prime example, Afghanistan being another. They were just one of many countries that take from the United States without giving anything in return. That’s ending!"

Indeed, Pakistan itself appears to have ended Trump's complaints by promising the US vast riches in crypto and mineral – along with endorsement for his Nobel Prize quest for ending its war with India, a claim that is now comedic gold dust for late-night talk show hosts. "Trump says he ended seven wars in seven months. That's impressive—it's like if I said I lost seven pounds by eating seven Big Macs,” joked CBS’ Stephen Colbert earlier this week. And from NBC’s Seth Meyers: Trump ended seven wars, including India-Pakistan—says who? India said, 'We handled it ourselves, thanks.' It's like Trump taking credit for ending my war on sleep by tweeting at 3 am.