Call me an eternal pessimist but I am not thrilled by Janab Zardari’s “India has never been a threat to Pakistan” rhetoric.

In the best of the scenarios, he is stating the truth. India as a country has never made any hostile gestures towards the nation that broke away from it in 1947 inflicting untold misery on those who had to flee to the other side of the border – in many cases, overnight. Pakistan, on the other hand, has always paid more attention to how it can destabilize its neighbor - with highly inflammable (pun intended!) terrorists and cross-border infilterations – rather than focusing on strengthening its own institutions. So yes, it has always been Pakistan which has been in a perpetual Jihad mode, whatever that word means.

But in the worst of the scenarios, this is just a lip service calculated to induce India in letting down her guard – by thinning out Indian troops in the Kashmir valley for example. We should not fall prey to this tactic. Talk peace till the hell freezes over if need be but under no circumstances should we relax the security measures. The rosy ideas of factories and mills across Pakistan catering to India’s needs should be implemented with utmost caution and with appropriate fallback plans in place. We are all witnessing how the whole world has caught cold with one sneeze from Uncle Sam. It will be disastrous to engage in extensive economic ties with the nation that has only back-stabbed us in the past. No one knows if Pakistan will ever have a strong democracy but we all know that if it gets a chance to cripple India economically, it won’t miss it for the world.

So let’s accept Janab Zardari’s bouquet of roses with smiles but let’s not forget that there are more thorns than petals in there. We once trusted China till the war came to our doorsteps. Let’s not repeat the history with Pakistan.