We Are Partners in Democracy

(The following is excerpted from a speech delivered by Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan before a joint session of Congress on June 7, 1989.)

My presence before you is a testament to the force of freedom and democracy in Pakistan. Throughout 1988, the call for democratic change in Pakistan grew louder. After a decade of repression, the wave of freedom surged in Pakistan. On November 16, the people of Pakistan participated in the first party-based election in 11 years. The Pakistan People's Party won a convincing victory, showing wide national support all across the four provinces of our great country. Democracy had at last returned to Pakistan.

Both our countries have stood alongside the Afghans in their struggle for more than a decade. For 10 long years, the people of Pakistan have provided sanctuary for our Afghan brothers and sisters.

We have nurtured and sustained their families. More than three million refugees are on our soil. Still more are coming, fleeing the bloodshed. And we have welcomed them, housed them and fed them. And for 10 long years, the United States, in a bipartisan effort of three administrations and six Congresses, has stood side by side with Pakistan and the brave mujahedin.

Our concerns are for a stable, independent and neulral Afghanistan. An Afghanistan where the people can choose their own system, their own government, in free and fair elections. We in Pakistan would like to see the refugees return home in peace and dignity. Unfortunately, the conflict is not over, it has entered its closing stage, often the most difficult and most complex stage.

Distinguished friends, Pakistan and the United States have traveled a long road with the Afghans in their quest for self-determination. Let us not at this stage, out of impatience or fatigue, become indifferent. We cannot, we must not, abandon their cause.

The world community must rise to the challenge which lies ahead, the challenge of achieving a broad-based political settlement to the war, of rebuilding a shattered country, of helping the victims of war.

Now Pakistan and the United States enter a new phase of an enduring relationship. Our shared interests and common international goals have not disappeared. If anything, they have been strengthened. Our partnership is not a friendship of convenience. For decades we have been tied together by mutual international goals and by shared interests. But something new has entered into the equation of bilateral relations—democracy. We are now moral as well as political partners, two elected governments bonded together in a common respect for constitutional government, accountability and a commitment to freedom.

Nuclear Proliferation

We must work together as partners to avert the catastrophe of a nuclear arms race. Speaking for Pakistan, I can declare that we do not possess, nor do we intend to make, a nuclear device.

That is our policy. We are committed to a regional approach to the nuclear problem, and we remain ready to accept any safeguard, inspection and verification that are applied on a nondiscriminatory regional basis. Pakistan has long advocated the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the region. A first step in that direction could be a nuclear test ban agreement between Pakistan and its neighbors in South Asia. We are prepared for any negotiation to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in our region. We will not provoke a nuclear arms race in the subcontinent.

For me and the people of Pakistan, the last 11 years have encompassed a painful odyssey. My countrymen and I did not see our loved ones dying, or tortured or lashed or languishing in solitary confinement, deprived of basic human rights, in order that others might again suffer such indignity. We sacrificed a part of our life, we bore the pain of confronting tyranny to build a just society. We believed in ourselves, in our cause, in our people and in our country. And when you believe, then there is no mountain too high to scale. That is my message to the youth of America, to its women and to its people.