Spinning like Qureshi

I don't need to be a foreign minister to know two things. One, if I want to tell Iran it doesn't need nukes, I can do so directly and not while delivering a speech in Washington DC, unless I want to scuttle the Iran-Pakistan gas deal. In that case I'll go through DC. That's two.
Without getting anything in return, our foreign minister adopted the American policy on Iran even before the start of the Strategic Dialogue. With one grand shot, he kicked the Iranians in the face, pleased Washington, and left the Turks scratching their heads. Just a few days ago the Turk prime minister was in Islamabad and heard from us how we support his initiative to back Iran's right to civil nuclear technology.
Except for Gen Kayani, every single Pakistani official who attended the meeting with president Obama came out a different person. It's as if a transformation took place behind closed doors. They entered as representatives of the Pakistani government and came out as roving ambassadors for the US administration. One of them shouted in disbelief, 'US doesn't want to see Pakistan weak.' Another one gratefully announced the US will pay for two small dams in the northwest. A third one faked a wise tone as he claimed the talks 'invigorated' Pak-US ties.
Going at this rate, if more rounds of this strategic dialogue were not stopped, we risk the emergence of a bluntly pro-America political party in Pakistan, called the Pro-America Political Party in Pakistan.
Foreign Minister Qureshi apparently attended a different strategic dialogue than the one most of us heard about here. In his ridiculously triumphant press conference after returning home, it was obvious he and his colleagues are no match for the cunning Americans. All weekend the official media outlets kept recycling the story that the benevolent United States 'has allocated $2 billion from the Kerry-Lugar bill for Pakistan's energy sector'. State-media newscasters kept repeating this line to show the immediate benefits of the strategic dialogue.
But this is misleading. Kerry-Lugar money was announced a year ago. Howcome this new aid? Isn't the US government cunningly recycling the same aid in new ways to create headlines? And why is our government endorsing this deception?
There is also every chance that the US-financing for the two small dams will also come from the same aid money announced a year ago.
Here's more of what our band of Washington converts won't tell Pakistanis:
That the US is welcoming Iran into Afghan talks, and India and Russia and anyone else, even Bangladesh. But not Pakistan. Grudgingly Richard Holbrooke is conceding that Pakistan has a 'legitimate interest' in Afghanistan but his government will do everything possible to dilute the Pakistani role by involving other countries.
The $2 billion lollypop for our military is a joke. It will come into effect not now but two years from now and end in 2016. We'll have four years to get what we want. Considering US-government red tape, political wrangling and Congressional politics and we can see where this is headed.
The US has increased the price on fighter jets and helicopters we already purchased and we can's afford them any longer.
And don't forget the blackmail: Washington wants to punish Pakistan army units allegedly involved in human-rights violations in Swat. This coming from a country whose military has fathered the worst rights' violations in recent memory in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least the defence minister, ISPR, the information minister or even the COAS should have given an earful to the Americans on this. Egypt and Israel, recipients of massive US aid, never take this kind of shakedown.
US officials visiting Pakistan intelligently rope in Pakistani TV channels, which obediently spare anchors and time slots to air one-sided lectures by US officials. To its credit, Geo was the only mainstream news channel that refused to partake of this exercise during Mrs Clinton's last visit.
Last week's talks in Washington were a chance for us to take some victims from FATA and Swat, and some victims of our losses of $64 billion since 2002 to Washington and put them on talk shows. Maybe the four-year-old lone daughter of a Pakistani Christian janitor who died shielding female students from a suicide bomber. Or the hundreds of our children orphaned by Pakistani civilian and military fathers having died in America's war.

The writer works for Geo television. Email: aq@paknationalists.com