Pakistan will help China in fight against Xinjiang militants: Sharif
South China Morning Post, 10 November 2014
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif shakes hands with China’s President Xi Jinping during their meeting on Saturday in Beijing. Photo: Xinhua
Reuters in Beijing – Pakistan will help China with its fight against extremists Beijing says are active in the unruly Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the country’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Saturday during a meeting with President Xi Jinping.
China blames the East Turkestan Islamic Movement for carrying out attacks in Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uygur people, though many foreign experts doubt the group’s existence in a cohesive group.
China, Pakistan’s only major ally in the region, has long urged Islamabad to weed out what it says are militants from Xinjiang, who are holed up in a lawless tribal belt, home to a lethal mix of militant groups, including the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Hundreds have died in unrest in Xinjiang in the last two years or so. Exiles and activists say Beijing’s controls on the religion and culture of the Uygur people is more a cause of the violence than well-organised militant groups.
Sharif told Xi that his country would “continue to resolutely fight the East Turkestan Islamic Movement terrorist forces”, China’s foreign ministry said in a statement following the meeting on the sidelines of the Apec conference in Beijing.
Pakistani soldiers on patrol in Quetta on Tuesday. Photo: AFP.
Pakistan will increase its coordination with China on Afghanistan too, so as to “jointly maintain regional peace and stability”, Sharif said.
Pakistan will also do all it can to guarantee the safety of Chinese companies and workers in the country, he added, who have in the past been attacked by militants.
China and Pakistan call each other “all-weather friends” and their close ties have been underpinned by longstanding wariness of their common neighbour, India, and a desire to hedge against US influence across the region.
China’s foreign ministry said the two countries had signed more than 20 agreements on Sharif’s trip, including on nuclear power and on the deepwater port of Gwadar, which China is developing. It provided no details.