New Delhi: While Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has been escalating his anti-Western rhetoric and alleging a global conspiracy to topple him, the Pakistan military is looking at resetting its ties with Western powers, especially the US — as hinted by Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa at a seminar this past weekend.
Sources in the Indian defence and security establishment said the Pakistan military is trying to get the country off the Grey List of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and is seeking defence cooperation with the West — which has increasingly been refusing to supply equipment and cancelling deals due to Pakistan’s support of terrorism.
According to the sources, this is because Pakistan’s military hasn’t had a good experience with some of the Chinese products they’ve procured.
Some of the Chinese equipment inducted in the past few years, including a main battle tank, artillery and air defence equipment, has been facing a lot of servicing and performance issues, the sources said.
While Pakistan has already signed a contract for a new set of submarines from China, the sources said that denials of defence technology to Pakistan by countries including Germany, besides the US and France, have impacted the country’s defence preparedness.
This included France’s refusal to upgrade its Agosta 90B class submarines with air-independent propulsion (AIP) for the Pakistan Navy, and also to upgrade the fleet of Mirage 2000s with the Pakistan Air Force.
Germany, too, had...
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