Pakistan is increasingly isolated, says daily

Pakistan is increasingly feeling isolated globally and in South Asia too, a commentary in a newspaper said Saturday, calling for a re-think on the country's foreign policy.

"Thanks to obstinately sticking to obsolete and self-serving paradigms, winds of change have largely eluded Islamabad," Arif Nizami, editor of the Pakistan Today, wrote in the daily.

"India is being wined and dined by world leaders while Pakistan is increasingly feeling isolated internationally and in the region as well."

Nizami said that while India was being perceived as an economic giant and the world's largest democracy by the West," Pakistan is being supported for the wrong reasons.

"No one wants to even harbour the idea of a nuclear armed-to-the-teeth state going under to the jihadists."

The commentary pointed out that even to assume that China would stand up with Pakistan as a bulwark against India would be indulging in an extreme form of naivete.

Islamabad, he said, had "oversold its strategic importance without realising its inherent limitations in the largely changed post-Cold War realities...

"It is clear that Kashmir is not going to be liberated anytime soon. Nor is New Delhi going to hand it to Pakistan on a platter. With war not being an option, talks are the only way forward."

Nizami said that resuming the stalled dialogue process with New Delhi was perhaps the biggest foreign policy challenge facing Pakistan.

"For that to happen, the mindset in Islamabad and Rawalpindi needs to change. And the change has to come from within."