Thaindian News

Islamabad, Aug 26 (IANS) The “inconvenient marriage” of Pakistan and US struggles on, an English daily said Friday as it noted that the relationship was being recalibrated.

“Despite the glacial nature of much of our relationship with the Americans of late, functional dialogue continues,” an editorial in the News International Friday said.

A US delegation that visited Pakistan Tuesday had met President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

“The agenda for meetings such as this is determined well in advance and changes little with successive meetings so they discussed what they have discussed many times before - bilateral relations, the war on terror and regional security issues.

“All of these issues are presently coloured by the current slump in the fortunes of this most inconvenient of marriages…”

The editorial went on to say that the Raymond Davis case was “perhaps the single greatest cause of national bitterness towards America; and to this can be added the bin Laden raid”.

Ties between Washington and Islamabad were hit after US undercover agent Raymond Davis fatally shot two Pakistanis in Lahore in February.

The ties were further strained after the May 2 killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad by US commandos.

It said: “A more generalised feeling that Uncle Sam cannot be trusted to speak with anything other than a forked tongue and has ditched us in the past means that as far as PR goes the Americans have a mountain to climb.”

“We are now in a time when the relationship is being recalibrated. Both states need one another but there is no equality discernible in the relationship or even many points of parity. We have in recent months sought to rein in some of the more unilateral US activities on our own soil.

“Despite the US being less than delighted with our newfound pushiness, the talking continues. PM Gilani is shortly to visit Washington and meet assorted American worthies but probably not President Obama. So the inconvenient marriage struggles on.”