| I am deeply touched that so many of you should have been able to join us here this evening. Those of you who have written books will understand only too well how many parallels there are between the gestation of a book and a term pregnancy, They will recognise therefore how akin the launching of a book is to the birth of a baby. Tonight, I would like to thank all of you for joining us at what is in a sense a family occasion, as we welcome a newborn addition to our family. |
| I know that talking about one's books might be considered as ill-mannered as talking about one's children. But tonight, I hope you will understand why I take an immodest pride when presenting to you my latest brainchild. Any virtues it may have only time will tell. All its defects though are genetic and derived solely from me as its single-parent. |
| As a joint parent, a far greater source of pride both for my wife Shahnaz and for myself are our natural children - Momina, Mubarika and Komail. Over the years, they have with grace, tolerance and exemplary patience shared with these eight other intrusive and demanding siblings the time I ought to have spent with them. |
| To my wife Shahnaz, I can never be grateful enough. She has been the most sporting of surrogate mothers. She had always urged me to write a book - as she put it - without pictures. I hope this is the book she wanted. To her, especially, my loving thanks, transmitted from a heart to a heart. |
| The genesis of this book emanated from a file of 49 documents maintained by the late President Yahya Khan. It was available to me, very generously, by his son Ali Yahya. |
| And of course to Oxford University Press, I owe a special acknowledgment for being my first and now my latest publishers. |
| To our two distinguished speakers - Ambasador Lu Shulin and Ambassador William Milam - I am deeply indebted for sparing their time and for gamely agreeing to serve as godparents tonight. |
| I am not sure how many of you are aware that they share an uncommon linguistic facility. Ambassador Shulin, for instance, speaks Urdu as well - if not better - than most of us Pakistanis do. And Ambassador Milam, who comes from a country which like ours was a former colony of the British Empire, speaks English language almost as well, if not better, than most of us ex-colonials do. For their presence here tonight and for their kind remarks, I am sincerely and immeasurably grateful. |
| Their ambassadorial persona symbolises the special relationship that subsisted, and continues to subsist with varying degrees of intensity, between the United States and Pakistan, and between Pakistan and China. It was originally a linear relationship. After Dr. Henry Kissinger's secret visit to Beijing in July 1971 it transformed into a diplomatic triangle between a capitalist superpower, a communist superpower, and a minor nation in between. |
| The benefits of that relationship have accrued in different measure, at different levels and at different times. Ties between the China and the United States have grown exponentially. The journey that began in Islamabad to Beijing in 1971 has led most recently to Pyongyang in North Korea. The ties between the United States and Pakistan have since slackened. The cordless ties between Pakistan and China are growing in every field. |
| There are many who have maintained that the ultimate price paid by the state of Pakistan for facilitating Dr. Kissinger's secret visit from Islamabad to Beijing in July 1971, was more than simply the cost of the fuel of the PIA aircraft that transported him to Beijing and back. |
| To others, suffering the consequences was unavoidable. It was the risk inherent in the function of any honest broker. As both Dr. Kissinger and President Richard Nixon acknowledged in their published memoirs, and Premier Zhou Enlai did on numerous public occasions, Pakistan could not have been more honest. Certainly, looking at the depressing indicators of our economy today thirty years later, no nation could be described as being broker. |
| The stuff of history, though, is surely not simply economic advantage or an ephemeral benefit. History is about time. History is about action. President Nixon, during his own visit to China in February 1972, recalled a saying by Chairman Mao Zedong, and I repeat his quotation: |
| `So many deeds cry out to be done, and always urgently. The world rolls on. Time passes. Ten thousand years are too long. Seize the day, seize the hour.' |
| My book I hope reflects the dramatic manner in which the leadership in the United States and in the People's Republic of China seized the day, seized the hour - and made history. |
| To the third name in that triangle of diplomatic contact - the late President Muhammad Yahya Khan, I believe goes a special and overdue credit. His part as the conduit of the furtive negotiations has never been given either overt or official recognition within his own country. That is both unfortunate and unfair. As the diplomatic intermediary between the White House and Beijing, he had the wisdom to speak when he needed to, and the discretion to remain silent, even when it was palpably against his own personal interest to do so. |
| I met the late President Yahya Khan too rarely to have benefited from his unique knowledge of the inside story that I have described in my book. That regret, like any hindsight, cannot be corrected now. I can however share with you a personal and telling anecdote about him. |
| General Yahya mentioned to me once that when he came to power in 1969, he noticed that in the Order of Precedence used for diplomatic occasions at President's House, there was no place provided for a former President of Pakistan. Apparently it had never occurred to anyone in our Protocol Department to anticipate that any of our former or ex-Presidents might merit an invitation to state functions. He ordered the omission to be rectified. |
| After he relinquished the Presidency, President Yahya Khan was not allowed to occupy his place in the diplomatic Order of Precedence. After his death, he has not found a balanced place in any contemporary chronicle of our country. It is my sincere hope, though, that through the pages of this account of his singular and self-less role in acting as the vital bridge between two great nations, he will be entitled to a place, a well-deserved place, in the annals of international diplomacy. |
