SERIOUS global challenges and their likely impact on Pakistan’s fragile economy make it incumbent on this country to initiate a process of national reconciliation. But any such move will not have a prayer unless both the hybrid set-up and the opposition step back from their confrontation.

After US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statement at a briefing in Washington, expressing gratitude to Pakistan for “their offer to be part of it, or at least their offer to consider being part of it [the International Stabilisation Force (ISF) for Gaza]”, what was clear was that issues remain to be addressed before any move forward on the matter.

Contacts have been going on since the ceasefire in Gaza in October this year. More recently, whe­ther it has been US-led activity in Doha or Florida or visits to Pakistan by the Jordanian monarch, the Indonesian president or the Egyptian defence minister, they all appear to be links in the same chain.

Around the time the October ceasefire was announced by US President Donald Trump, the perceptive king of Jordan made the observation, which is at the heart of the matter — that his country and other Muslim nations would have a ‘peacekeeping’ but not a ‘peace enforcement’ role.

This observation is what has triggered the contacts and conversations around the region and the world because regardless of what the US and Israel want, at least the........

© Dawn