Kissinger – who made 1971 path-breaking, Pakistan-facilitated trip to China – turns 100

WASHINGTON, May 28 (APP):US former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who marked his 100th birthday on Saturday, is best remembered, among other diplomatic undertakings, for his secret 1971 trip to Beijing from Pakistan, that led to a breakthrough in China-US relations.

At his landmark birthday Dr. Kissinger, who was born in Germany on 27 May 1923, has outlasted many of his political contemporaries who guided the United States through one of its most tumultuous periods including the presidency of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War.

Kissinger has had multiple heart surgeries; he’s hard of hearing and blind in one eye. Even so, he told CBS News he works about 15 hours a day.

At a webinar some two years ago, Kissinger praised Pakistan for its role during that period and how former President Yahya Khan, acted as a go-between China and US, communicating secretly with Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and President Richard Nixon, which led to Kissinger’s path-breaking journey in a PIA plane from Rawalpindi to Beijing on July 9, 1971.

Dr Kissinger recounted how the first message from China was in the form of a handwritten note, which was personally dictated to him in the White House by the then Pakistan Ambassador in Washington, Agha Hilaly.

Kissinger’s meeting with Chinese premier Chou en-lai in Beijing produced an agreement that President Nixon would visit China. Nixon went in February 1972.

Speaking next at the same webinar, Senator Mushahid Hussain, representing Pakistan, said that this historic breakthrough in China-US relations became possible due to the ‘indispensable role of Pakistan. Pakistan enjoyed the trust of both China and the United States, when then President, Richard Nixon, had ‘tremendous affection and goodwill for Pakistan’.

Senator Mushahid Hussain said that President Yahya Khan, once entrusted with this task by both President Richard Nixon and Premier Zhou Enlai, undertook this sensitive mission with ‘military precision, secrecy and deception’, with an official announcement of a decoy visit by Kissinger to Nathiagali.

The pretext was that the American official was resting due to an upset stomach, while he had secretly flown to Beijing.

He said that President Yahya relied only on a two-man team of his top diplomats, Foreign Secretary Sultan Mohammed Khan and Ambassador Hilaly.