In 1971, Pakistan helped make the arrangements for Henry Kissinger's secret visit to China and Nixon's subsequent trip.

In 1987 when I was a journalist, I reported the visit by Abdus Salam, the father of Pakistan nuclear science. During Salam's visit, he met Deng Xiaoping. During the meeting Deng Xiaoping expressed his full support of Salam's idea of strengthening the scientific and technological ties among the third world countries.

Deng told Salam that scientists from the third world countries should feel self-confident and proud in serving their own countries with their scientific achievements.

I am always proud of the Pakistani scientists' achievements. I deeply admire Pakistani scientist and engineers for their hard work and talents in developing their country's science and technology.

Like China, Pakistan is a developing country. But its people and the government give full support to its science and technology program even though people live in poverty.

Because Pakistan has strong defense science and technology, China feels very safe and peaceful in its frontier regions like Xinjiang and Tibet. There will be absolutely no stability in Xinjiang and Tibet without the solid brotherhood of Pakistan.

Pakistan is at the crossroads of the legendary Silk Road between China and the West. I understand that Obama has his own agendas in Afghanistan.

But I believe that any military policies and actions taking place in this region must serve the interests of the national security, national unity, social stability, economic development and regional cooperation among the three countries: Pakistan, China and Afghanistan.

The author is a professor at Tsinghua University and author of the coming book Intellectual dialogues of Tibet. xiguang@tsinghua.edu.cn