London, July 06: With his forces battling Taliban in the country’s troubled northwest, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari does not see India as the foremost threat and says the “position of being able to take over another state is nullified” after both countries acquired nuclear arms.
As his goodwill gestures towards India clubbed with a domestic campaign to end militancy have attracted criticism at home, Zardari says “it rankles the small mind.”
“It does not rankle the army, because after India and Pakistan became nuclear powers, that position of being able to take over another state is nullified,” the President said in an interview to ‘The Daily Telegraph’.
In remarks that may give a boost to the US hopes for a united front against al-Qaeda and Taliban, Zardari said that his security forces’ operations against militants would in future target figures who were the military’s “strategic assets”.
–PTI