WASHINGTON: A democratic Pakistan is critical to the interests of the United States, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday, hours after Shehbaz Sharif was elected as the prime minister.<\/p>\n
Ex-prime minister Imran Khan\u00a0repeatedly blamed the US\u00a0for backing the no-confidence motion \u2014 that lead to his\u00a0ouster early Sunday\u00a0\u2014 and has\u00a0refused to accept\u00a0the newly-elected premier, saying “there can’t be any bigger insult to this country” \u2014 but the Joe Biden administration denied any role.<\/p>\n
In a press briefing at the White House, Psaki said: “We support the peaceful upholding of constitutional democratic principles, we don’t support one political party over another.”<\/p>\n
The White House press secretary said the United States “certainly” supports the principles of rule of law and equal justice under the law.<\/p>\n
Psaki added that the US values its long-standing cooperation with Pakistan and has always viewed a prosperous and democratic Pakistan as critical to US interests \u2014 that remains unchanged regardless of who the leadership is.<\/p>\n
In response to a question about whether Biden would call Shehbaz, Psaki said: “In terms of future calls, I don’t have anything to predict at this point and time, obviously, we stay in close touch with them at a range of levels.”<\/p>\n
Since Biden assumed the US president’s office in 2021, Imran Khan and Biden did not hold a telephonic conversation.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan congratulated Shehbaz on becoming the 23rd premier of Pakistan.<\/p>\n
In his congratulatory message to Shehbaz on Twitter, PM Modi said: “Congratulations to H. E. Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif on his election as the Prime Minister of Pakistan.”<\/p>\n
“India desires peace and stability in a region free of terror so that we can focus on our development challenges and ensure the well-being and prosperity of our people,” he said.<\/p>\n
In a telephonic conversation with Shehbaz, Turkish President Erdogan told the newly-elected prime minister that he was “extremely happy” about him being elected as the premier.<\/p>\n
“I am sure that under your leadership, Pakistan-Turkey’s brotherly ties will bolster,” said Erdogan, who called Shehbaz hours after the lower house of the Parliament elected him.<\/p>\n
In response, Shehbaz said he aspired to bring both the countries closer during his tenure as the prime minister and thanked Erdogan for his congratulatory telephonic call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: A democratic Pakistan is critical to the interests of the United States, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday, hours after Shehbaz Sharif was elected as the prime minister. Ex-prime minister Imran Khan\u00a0repeatedly blamed the US\u00a0for backing the no-confidence motion \u2014 that lead to his\u00a0ouster early Sunday\u00a0\u2014 and has\u00a0refused to accept\u00a0the newly-elected premier, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":7583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[5411,5412,438,482],"class_list":["post-7582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pakistan","category-world","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-turkish-president-erdogan","tag-twitter","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}