We have been hearing news of the Pakistan government's
efforts to reach a settlement with the Tethyan Copper Company (TCC)
in connection with the Reko Diq matter involving copper and gold
reserves worth billions of dollars. International arbitration
proceedings before the International Center for Settlement of
Investment Disputes (ICSID) and the International Chamber of
Commerce tribunals are ongoing in this matter. More than two years
after the Supreme Court declared the agreement with the TCC
illegal, the government's efforts to reach a settlement with
the TCC are instructive. Assuming the news reports are accurate, it
signals a significant departure from the patriotic posturing and
legal wrangling that we have witnessed over the past couple of
years. In one of my op-eds on this subject published a couple of
years ago, I had argued whether our national interest was served
merely by generating nationalist hysteria to morph a purely legal
issue into an issue about
