We are on the threshold of the Asian Century today. The expansion of markets and the information revolution has revolutionized the nation-state into a regional player.

In Pakistan as well, the PPP seeks a regional economic alignment with potential trading partners in the SAARC region. The demilitarization of border regions in conflict zones such as Pakistan and India and the institutionalization of dialogue are part of an enduring model that PPP past governments promoted and one that our party continues to pursue in the national arena.

Yet regional inequalities continue to dominate Asia as much as the globe.

Many countries with a development lag are not equipped to deal yet with the impending regimes of the WTO. Structural weaknesses, public debt, and low commodity prices will prevent us from driving our economies on the engine of open markets and export-led growth. On the other hand we will face the risk of local firms and farms being over-run by cheaper foreign products.

The solution today for many of us lies in enhanced co-operation between developing countries and a sustained dialogue mechanism between the Asian bloc.

We stand on the threshold of a world in danger by the forces of global terrorism and local implosions. September 11 has redefined citizenhood and identity in ways that the 20th century could never have imagined.

Muslims all over the world are confronted with two unhappy and unproductive choices:that either they surrender their religious and cultural identities to prove their distance from the project of militant Islam, or else they turn to extremes to embrace only a one-dimensional aspect of their identity.

Projecting civilizations and culture as clashing, opposing forces that can never be reconciled is rejecting both modern and ancient history.The world’s greatest projects and empires have been built on cultural and political accommodation, not the imposition of one people’s will on another. An undue emphasis on profiling based on religion can only stoke the fires of a new Armageddon, which may this time not rain fire and brimstone from one nation on another, but like a holocaust with many faces will spring from our midst, pitting neighbour against neighbour.

As a frontline state in the war on terror, we are both victim and predator.

Pakistan’s military and police forces are among the only agencies in the world today that can make serious inroads in this war without boundaries. As their chief executive in the past, Ms. Benazir Bhutto found them to be one of the most competent and courageous forces in active combat.

Where we disagree fundamentally with the international community is in their chosen strategy in pursuit of our common goals. Military dictators can never provide an institutional framework against a hydra-headed monster of covert militancy and multinational terrorism. Dictatorship-led missions invariably become bogged in their own crises of legitimacy.

Sadly for us, Pakistan has become a text-book case of such a crisis of legitimacy, where the state has become a target of the very same terror it is ostensibly engaged in eliminating. What is most alarming is that suicide assassins are now operating for the first time in Pakistan, aiming at other High Value targets witnessed on the then imported Prime Ministerial candidate, Shaukat Aziz during the by elections.

At no point in the South Korean encounter with military rule did the latter try to distort the political and judicial processes of this country. In fact, it was quite the contrary. In Pakistan, unfortunately, General Musharraf has not only tampered with the political and judicial process to give himself constitutional cover, but has deliberately marginalized major political forces by driving their leadership and cadre out of the country, or underground, or in jails.

Let me assure you that eliminating terrorist groups is not an easy task, nor is it ever a project that can totally succeed in one life-time.

We can only make a dent in terror incorporated, if Pakistan is returned to a model of political stability and economic security. A civilian government with roots in moderate, mainstream Pakistan is the only entity empowered to do that.

My Party has a dream that one day soon our country will return to genuine representative democracy, and once that day comes we will in partnership with Asian and global leadership be able to achieve the results we are seeking in this war. We not only have a dream but a road-map for realizing that vision. We believe that federal, progressive forces like our own are the only solution to healing the wounds inflicted on our nation by mis-directed individuals and groups.

My Party seeks a country where all genuine political forces are able to shed their differences and start anew, where the military does the job it knows best, of defending Pakistan’s territorial boundaries instead of sharpening ideological fault-lines; where every citizen no longer lives in fear of a car-bomb down the road or a nuclear bang on the border, where every child has recourse to a roof over her head and a school-bag full of textbooks that teach peace instead of war; where every woman has recourse to the rule of law instead of brutal tribal justice; where political prisoners are freed and where elections are held under a consensus commission; where every labourer gets paid a fair wage and where every business is given the security it needs to create jobs and growth.

Let us not forget, this is the promised Asian century. Our time has come to take the lead.