London: Pakistan’s military has reportedly proposed allowing the United States to build and operate a new port along the Arabian Sea, aiming to provide Washington with a strategic foothold in the region and strengthen bilateral ties, according to a British media report published Saturday.
‘The Financial Times’ claims to have seen the plan put forward by advisers to Pakistani Army Chief Asim Munir, who have approached US administration officials with an offer that will involve American investors developing the seaside fishing town of Pasni as a terminal for access to Pakistan’s critical minerals.
Pasni is around 160km from Iran and 112km from the Pakistani city of Gwadar, which has a China-backed port.
The newspaper report points out that the initiative is not official policy but indicates how Pakistani officials are exploring ways to capitalise on the geopolitical upheaval in South Asia for its advantage.
The initiative has been floated with some US officials, and was shared with Munir ahead of a meeting with Trump in the White House late last month, two civilian advisers to the Army Chief told the newspaper on condition of anonymity.
However, a senior Trump administration official said the US President and his advisers had not discussed such a proposal.
According to the clandestine plan, the proposed Pasni port is expected to be linked to a new railway to transport minerals from Pakistan’s interior, in particular copper and antimony, a vital ingredient in batteries, fire-retardant and missiles.
A blueprint anticipated the port would cost up to $1.2 billion with a proposed financing model that would be a mix of Pakistani federal and US-backed development finance.
It excludes “direct basing”, so as not to serve as a US military installation, but is seen as an effort to rebuild and reframe ties frayed over Pakistan’s support for the Taliban during the US-led war in Afghanistan.
A senior Pakistani military official told the newspaper that Munir, “does not have any advisers in an official capacity”, adding that the port idea “surfaced in private discussions” with US businesses and had not been “submitted through official channels” and “remains a commercial idea pending appropriate consideration”.
The scheme is said to be one of several ideas floated publicly and privately by Pakistani officials to maintain momentum with the Trump administration.
They include engagement with a Trump-backed crypto venture, deepening cooperation against Afghanistan-based militant group ISIS-K, endorsement of his Gaza peace plan and access to critical minerals.
Munir and Trump have forged what US and Pakistani diplomats are referring to as ‘a bromance’ since the American President claimed credit in May for a ceasefire that ended the worst fighting between Pakistan and India in decades, claims the FT report.
While India has consistently rejected Trump’s claims of involvement in the ceasefire in the wake of Operation Sindoor in May, Pakistani officials have publicly thanked him and even nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“The whole narrative [of the US-Pakistan] relationship changed after the war,” the newspaper quotes one of the Pakistani advisers involved in back-channel dialogue with Trump’s team as saying.
“It was very bad before then. We had not tended the relationship as we should have. In the last two decades the Indians occupied the space in the vacuum,” he told the ‘FT’.
After their latest meeting last month, the White House released pictures of Munir and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif presenting the US leader with a display case of mineral samples.
PTI
