At a conference in Islamabad, Jiang Zaidong, China's ambassador to Pakistan, said that security is the biggest obstacle to the success of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
Zaidong called on the Pakistani government to launch military operations against all anti-Chinese terrorist groups.
Zaidong on Tuesday (October 30) expressed his dissatisfaction over the security problems in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project and the occurrence of "terrorist" attacks against Chinese citizens. He called two deadly attacks on Chinese employees in Pakistan in the past six months "unacceptable”.
"Under no circumstances can we tolerate repeated attacks, and these attacks have resulted in casualties," the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan said. "Pakistan should take more security measures to protect Chinese employees, institutions and projects."
Zaidong also stressed on the need to punish the perpetrators of these attacks and crack down on anti-China "terrorist" groups.
In the past six months, there have been two attacks against Chinese citizens in Pakistan, one in March and the other 10 days before the Chinese premier's visit to Pakistan, in October.
At the conference, Pakistan's Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar attributed his country's security situation to the "friendly policies" of the previous Pakistani government with Afghanistan. He referred to the visit of Faiz Hameed, the former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), after the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan.
"We should blame ourselves for the cup of tea we drank in Kabul," Dar said. “We have to blame ourselves for the 102 hardened criminals who were involved in various crimes but were released after a cup of tea," he added.
"We should blame ourselves for the 35,000 to 40,000 terrorists who left Pakistan but returned to the country after the opening of the borders with Afghanistan," he added.
Pakistan's foreign minister and deputy prime minister also stressed that anti-terrorism operations have been launched in the country and its results will be presented soon.
