{"id":15933,"date":"2019-03-24T13:37:34","date_gmt":"2019-03-24T05:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=15933"},"modified":"2019-03-24T13:37:44","modified_gmt":"2019-03-24T05:37:44","slug":"knowing-each-others-strengths-bodes-well-for-malaysia-pakistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=15933","title":{"rendered":"Knowing each other’s strengths bodes well for Malaysia, Pakistan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"

Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, left, accompanied by his counterpart Imran Khan, right, on his departure today after his three-day official visit starting Thursday at the Pakistan Air Force Base Nur Rawalpindi. Photo courtesy Bernama<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

ISLAMABAD, March 24 (NNN- Bernama) — Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad\u2019s three-day official visit to Pakistan proved to be a fruitful mission especially in terms of knowing each other strengths for mutual benefits in the long run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many things both Islamic countries can do to complement each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There are many fields (for cooperation between Malaysia and Pakistan). But (before this ), we did not know of their capabilities and they did not know of our capabilities. Only when we are here, can we see their strengths,\u201d Dr Mahathir told the Malaysian media at the end of the visit on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pakistan today is not the same Pakistan that he visited in 1984, 1997 and 2002, when he was prime minister for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many think Pakistan as \u201ca poor military country\u201d due to the bad perception on the country. And not many people know that the South Asian country is a producer of military vehicles and the JF-17 Thunder fighter jet. In fact they sell these products to other countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, it\u2019s no surprise that Pakistan is trying to persuade several countries including Malaysia to buy the JF-17 Thunder fighter jet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey have been able to build aircraft (JF-17 Thunder). The aircraft demonstrated (during the Pakistan Day parade) performed very well. I know Pakistan would like to sell their planes to us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the achievements of the visit was witnessed on the second day where Dr Mahathir and his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan officiated the groundbreaking for Proton\u2019s manufacturing assembly plant in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The assembly plant will be built near Karachi in Sindh province, and it will be the Proton\u2019s first plant in the South Asian region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plant will have a production capacity of 25,000 units a year starting June 2020, with the Saga as the first model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen they (Pakistan) agreed with us to the proposal to manufacture our (Proton) cars, I felt it was a good thing. If they could produce military vehicles, I don\u2019t think other types of vehicles would be much of a problem,\u201d Dr Mahathir said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though the Prime Minister showed that he was impressed on how Pakistan has developed and believed that cooperation with Pakistan will really benefit Malaysia, Malaysia will not take sides on the Pakistan-India issue where tensions are running high between the two neighbours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDiplomatically we decided to be friendly with everyone. We do not care what their internal politics and internal ideologies are but we want to be friendly with them, so that we can trade with them, and we can solve a lot things that we need from them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMalaysia today officially has no enemies except for Israel. We had never had any relations with Israel. It\u2019s not because we are against the Jews. it\u2019s because of the wrong things they do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Pakistan, the country took pride in the way Malaysia has developed and raised the standard of living of Malaysians under the premiership of Dr Mahathir and hoped to learn many things from Malaysia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDuring the 1998 Southeast Asia economic crisis, Malaysia was the only one that managed to get out of the crisis through homegrown solutions. We Pakistan now face a difficult economic situation \u2026 and so many things to do to get out from it,\u201d said Imran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imran was also impressed on how Malaysia managed to develop especially by having more foreign direct investment (FDI) and technology transfer, besides successfully developing the tourism industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne area we can get a very quick return is to learn from Malaysia\u2019s experience in tourism. Malaysia, from what we were told generated almost US$22 billion (yearly) from tourism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c(Unlike) Pakistan with vast resources generates nothing from tourism. We have discussed how to seek help from Malaysia to develop the tourism industry,\u201d the Pakistani premier said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Mahathir\u2019s visit was at the invitation of Imran to attend the Pakistan Day celebration, which is observed on March 23 every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Friday, Dr Mahathir was conferred the Nishan-e-Pakistan<\/em> or Order of Pakistan, the country\u2019s highest civilian award, by Pakistan President Dr Arif Alivi at the Aiwan-e-Sadr Presidential Palace.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISLAMABAD, March 24 (NNN- Bernama) — Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad\u2019s three-day official visit to Pakistan proved to be a fruitful mission especially in terms of knowing each other strengths for mutual benefits in the long run. There are many things both Islamic countries can do to complement each other. “There are many fields […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":15934,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[288],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15933"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}