LAHORE: (Tuesday, January 29, 2012): “The structural contradiction which Manto also saw in this anti-people, pro-imperialist relationship with such foresight in the 1950s, became a permanent feature for the rest of the century, including the future of democracy in the former itself, leading to the current impasse in co-operation over NATO supply routs in Afghanistan, amid frequent drone attacks on Pakistani civilian targets”. These were the views expressed at the seminar organized by Punjab University’s Pakistan Study Centre here on Tuesday. Director PSC Prof Dr Massarrat Abid, PhD scholar Raza Naeem, Dr Ahmad Ejaz, faculty members and MPhil, PhD students were present on the occasion. The lecture covered the writings of Sadat Hassan Manto which were a series of 9 letters in Urdu, appeared at the time when Pakistan was going to build a security partnership with US in 1950s. The letters addressed to the United States with regard to US foreign policy, covered a four-year period (1951-1954). The speakers said Manto spared nothing and no-one in his assessment of the health of the Pakistan-US relationship. They said that Manto had foreseen shortcomings of Pakistan’s relations with United States, which Pakistan was confronting today. They said that there was a deficiency on the side of Pakistan’s foreign policy that Pakistan has chosen United States as a remedy of all its problems. They said that was why Pakistan had not been fully able to manage the balance in relationships with other powers of the world.