We have seen your relationship with the Pakistani military evolve a lot within a very short period of time. When you were in power, you would say that you and the military are on the same page. And then we saw that you not only accused the top brass of conspiring your alster, but also that the military didn't give you enough room while you were governing and they were calling the shots. What kind of a relationship do you think the military should have with the civilian government and with any political party? Well, first let me just define what you mean by the military. Military means one man, the army chief. So the whole policy of military vis-a-vis they are dealing with the civilian government depends on the personality of one man. So in this case, you know, the positive side during our relationship with General Bajwa rather than the military. Then when we were on the same page which meant that we had the organized strength of Pakistan army to help us. And we worked together and you know Pakistan was considered one of the six stories of the government. Now the problem was that General Bajwa favored some of the biggest crooks in this country and would not, he did not think corruption was this big a problem and he wanted us to work with them. And he helped them with them, giving them a minute from the corruption cases. He had a very close relationship with Shibashi, the current prime minister. And for some reason, you know, he worked, he conspired and this regime changed a place. Well, he rejects those allegations but my question is if you come back in power, what makes you think things will be different that the army that has consistently played a huge role in Pakistan would back off? The leading principle of the balances, that the elected government that has the responsibility which people have mandated them through their vote must also have the authority. You cannot have, you cannot separate responsibility and authority. So if the authority lies with the army chief, responsibility lies with the prime minister, no management system works. So do you believe it could be different next time and if you don't believe it's going to be different next time, why do you want to run for election? It can be, it can be because Pakistan is evolving all the time. And I'm sure amongst the new military leadership, there's a realization that this experiment of regime change has gone wrong. Pakistan is, the economy has gone into a tailspin. You're facing the worst crisis in our history, the economic crisis, but not just that, the governance crisis and there's no way to get out of this. The only way is that we have a completely, a paradigm shift from where the way Pakistan has been run. You've been agitating for elections for almost 10 months now, but you've also said that you don't believe the next elections are going to be free and fair. Will you accept the results of the elections if your party does not win a majority? They have completely destroyed the credibility as an impartial election commission. They won't be free and fair elections, but there will be elections. But will you accept the results in case your party does not win a majority whenever the general elections help? That's pretty mature to say, you know, I mean, how can I say right now the extent of rigging they'll do? There was a, there was a local government election and it sends all the political parties rejected the local government election, all of them. They will be rigging, but to the extent I can't say right now. What's the best talk for a policy? Do you believe that the Afghans Taliban government is friendly to Pakistan? Well, firstly, whatever government is in Afghanistan, Pakistan must have good relationship with them. I tried my best with the Ghani government because our interest is that having good relationship with the government in Kabul means that we have a two and a half thousand kilometer border with them and which means that, you know, if they have problems of terrorism, then they will help us. But so far, even the Pakistani government say, this is not getting the help from the Afghans Taliban to fight terrorism. The way it would have liked and the way you are saying. What is disturbing is that a foreign minister, he's spent almost all his time out of Pakistan, but he's not paid one visit to to Afghanistan. I'm not saying it's going to be easy. But do we want to repeat of what happened to Pakistan from 2005 onwards to 2050, where Pakistan was going under suffering from terrorism all along the Afghan border? So I think we are not in a position to have another war on terror. And the only way is to somehow get Kabul to work with us so that we can jointly deal with this, this issue. One of the reasons that terrorism has spiked in Pakistan now is because, according to Nakhta, the National Accountor Terrorism Authority, the time that was taken for negotiations with TTP was used by that group to reorganize. And those talks started when you were in power. Do you stand by your decision to green light those talks? Well, firstly, what were the choices Pakistani faced, Pakistani government faced? The Taliban took over and they decided that TTP, and we were talking about 30 to 40,000 people, the families included. Once they decided to send them back to Pakistan. Now what choices was Pakistan confronted with? I should we have just lined them up and shot them, or should we have tried to work with them to resettle them and bearing in mind that it was not going to be an easy process. And the idea was that the resettlement had to be done with the concurrence of the politicians all along the border, the Fatah region, and along with the security forces, plus the Taliban, the TTP. But you know that never happened because our government left. And once our government was removed, the new government took a sigh of the ball. Meanwhile this threat grew and it's possible that they regrouped. But then where were the Pakistani security forces, where were intelligence agencies? Could they not see them grouping? So the problem is how could we be held responsible for their negligence? Throughout last year at pretty much every rally, your narrative was that the US conspired with your political opponents to remove you from office. If you come back into power again, what kind of challenges do you see in repairing your relationship with Washington? Well firstly, international relationship should not be based on personal egos. It should they should be based on the interest of the people of your country. So the people of Pakistan, their interest is that we have good relationship with the US, US being a superpower. And our biggest trading partner, I mean Pakistan exports more to the US than any other country. Whatever happened now, I mean as things unfold, it was in the US who told the Pakistan, it was unfortunately from what now evidence has come out. It was General Bajwa who actually somehow managed to tell the Americans that I was an American. And so it wasn't imported from there, it was exported from here to there. So do you still believe that the US played a role in removing you from office? Well, the cipher is real. It was an official meeting, monitored by, uh, uh, and, uh, and, uh, between Donald Lou, the undersecretary of state to South Asia and the Pakistan ambassador. And this was brought to the National Security Council and a cabinet, the minutes of the meeting. And except that it's in the past, we have to move on. It's the interest of Pakistan to have good relationship with the US. And that's what we intend to do. Um, a little bit about human rights. I was reading your interview that you gave to the New Yorker and when you were asked about your stance on the, on the vegan issue, the Chinese treatment of its vegan Muslims, you said that you, you don't essentially call China out for its abuse of the vegan, it's because it would cost Pakistan a lot because Pakistan relies very heavily on China. Does that mean that when you speak for Palestinians or for Kashmiris, it's because it's easy to do that because there are no serious political consequences for Pakistan? Is this how a country should manage its moral positions? Remember the prime minister of a country, his main responsibility, I has own people. So you do not want to make statements, moral statements about other countries, which would affect the lives of your own population. So I'll give you an example. We were told to take position on, on Ukraine. We decided to stay neutral. You know, the, the, the Russian invasion to Ukraine. India decided to stay neutral being a strategic partner of the US. Why? Because India sensibly thought about its own people. It got oil from Russia at 40% discount. So by actually taking sides, you can actually affect the lives of your own people. So my responsibility as a prime minister were the 220 million people of my own country. And it's exactly what the Western countries do. They don't take positions where it hurts their economic interest. Kashmir, the United Nations Security Council has passed resolutions on Kashmir. That's a disputed territory. India took over Kashmir unilaterally. Do response from the Western countries because India has a strategic partner. So you know, countries like us who have large populations that are hovering around the poverty line, we at least do not have the luxury of making moral statements.