President Zardari's visit to Russia last week was in the making for quite some time. That it took place shortly after the May 2 US raid it tends to expand Pakistan's foreign policy options beyond the erstwhile Cold War parameters. Even since Pakistan's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, decided to visit Washington, renouncing an earlier commitment to go to Moscow, relations between Pakistan and the then Soviet Union had been anything but normal.
In fact, there were even dangerous confrontations brought about by incidents like the U-2 flights from a base near Peshawar and later on, in the 1980s, Pakistan's whole hog alliance with the United States against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that almost put the two on a warpath. But there were good times also, and the Soviet Union did generously help Pakistan in setting up the mammoth plant of Pakistan Steel Mills and created the Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDC) for countrywide exploration of oil and gas.
Almost all along these good and bad times between Pakistan and the Soviet Union there was this inhibiting factor of New Delhi's strategic relationship with Moscow which never stopped at mudding the Pak-USSR waters. With the end of Cold War things were expected to change for the better, but given Moscow's lingering inability to adjust to the post-Cold War world and Pakistani bureaucracy's pro-West mindset it has taken time. Hopefully, President Zardari's visit would break the ice and strengthen the Pak-Russia ties in consonance with the spirit of emerging globalisation free of Superpower rivalry and negative influence that India had over Moscow.
Rightly then during President Zardari's visit the two sides signed a joint statement to initiate co-operative moves to combat terrorism and interdict drug trafficking. Given that most of the region is traditionally home to opium cultivation the powerful narco dealers have the potential to promote terrorism both Pakistan and Russia share a common concern. Moscow is not only concerned over the political stability of the Central Asian Republics it is facing the challenges of religious extremism and militancy within its own territory particularly in Chechnya.
During the presidential visit the Pakistani leadership invited the host government and the private sector to come and invest in Pakistan. It's quite encouraging that a number of Russia's leading companies are keen to develop Pakistan's energy sector by increasing the country's power generation capacity as well as in developing gas fields.
There were also indications that the Russian business community would like to work with the Pakistan government and businesses in a number of commercial, infrastructural and banking projects. Other areas of interest to potential Russian investors are auto manufacturing, cross-country oil and gas pipelines, textile value addition and upgradation of Heavy Mechanical Complex (HMC) and Pakistan Machine Tool Factory, Karachi.
Of course, merely one joint statement and a few MoUs are hardly enough to precipitate a comprehensive bilateral relationship between the two countries. To translate a state visit into some reality on the ground there is always the need for a concrete follow-up action. Never before has such an opportune time for solid co-operation come.
It is our hope that there would be exchanges of commercial and economic delegations between Islamabad and Moscow in the near future. Given Pakistan's growing political frustration with the West, Islamabad is no doubt in search of, if you please, 'new friends'. From the Pakistani perspective, Moscow's pro-India stance, embedded as it was in the Cold War, tends to undergo change, all the more now that New Delhi is assiduously building new bridges with the West.