Prime Minister lands in ‘hostile territory’ for the 72nd session of UNGA

World leaders have gathered in New York for the 72^nd United Nations General Assembly session; the theme of the session revolves around, “Focusing on people: Striving for Peace and a Decenet life for all on a Sustainable Planet”. During a week’s long session; Donald Trump will address the UN for the first time and Mr. Shahid Abbasi, too, will debut into high level International diplomacy.

The time line, Prime Minister’s engagement and developments at International level, all will impart in how strongly Pakistan put forth its point.

PM’ Engagements:

Prime Minister has landed in New York and will lead the country’s delegation in UNGA. He is all set to address the UN on 21^st Sep – this speech, interestingly, will coincide with the address of President Trump to UN.

The Premier – during his short four day stay in U.S – will be interacting with U.S’s Vice President Mike Pence and also, will take part in UN events.

In addition to his activities - at UNGA and those related to forums on 193-member body side lines – he is scheduled to meet UN Secretary General Gueterres, as well as, leaders of the various Nations at UN.

Mr. Abbasi will also be speaking to the representatives of the Council on Foreign Relations and U.S Pakistan Business Council.

Critical Time to be at UNGA:

The time line of this session is very critical for Pakistan. A string of closely-related International developments and intense changes in national politics have taken place, just before this session. These changes - both on National and International level – have made headlines and riveted the attention of global media, all for wrong reasons.  This merited a debate about revisiting policies internally, however, to keep a strict stance regionally and internationally.

The pithy and admonishing tone of Trump for Pakistan while introducing his new Afghan policy, the declaration of Pakistan-Based terrorist group as a threat to regional security in BRICS declaration and India’s agenda to seek a permanent seat in UN’s Security Council, will effect Pakistan’s standpoint in UNGA.

However, a look at Premier’s engagement doesn’t quite go along with the idea of having strong point of view on any of the issues and schedule shows that it’s pretty generic and not specific at all – which is need of the hour.

On the other hand, the schedule of, India’s foreign minister Mrs. Sushma Swaraj - is very specific and gives the hint of changing International situations and loyalties based on them. Mrs. Swaraj attended a trilateral meeting with her American and Japanese counterparts to enhance the co-operation between these nations.

Indian efforts to link North Koera issue with Pakistan:

After the meeting, Mrs. Sawaraj demanded for the investigations into North-Koreas nuclear proliferation linkages with Pakistan. Thus, creating more troubles for – already troubled - Pakistan.

However, it’s interesting that, Sushma Swaraj totally forget the case of CSSTEAP. The CSSTEAP (Center for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific) was built by United Nations in 1995 and is situated in a small town of Dehardhun, India.

Since then, North Korea has sent at least 30 students to the center for training, some of them were affiliated with nuclear program of country too. India kept on accepting students from N-Korea even after UN implemented nuclear sanction in 2006. According to which, no member country would provide any technical assistant to DRNK (Democratic Republic of North korea). This lapse was exposed in an annual report to UN Security Council in 2016, thus raising suspicion on the role of India in assisting North Korea for the development of nuclear Program.

The inexperienced newly-sworn in Prime Minister, the accusations on Pakistan, regarding the spread of terrorism and hyper active neighboring country, will make Pakistan’s time at UNGA tough. But Pakistan, too, have enough ammunition up its sleeves to counter the attacks.