News
Friday, December 02, 2011
Obama not to offer formal condolences to Pakistan: NYT
LAHORE: The White House has decided that President Obama will not offer formal condolences — at least for now — to Pakistan for the deaths of two dozen soldiers in NATO airstrikes last week, overruling State Department officials who argued for such a show of remorse to help salvage America’s relationship with Pakistan, administration officials were quoted by The New York Times. On Monday, US Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter told a group of White House officials that a formal video statement from Obama was needed to help prevent the rapidly deteriorating relations between Islamabad and Washington from cratering, administration officials said. The ambassador, speaking by videoconference from Islamabad, said that anger in Pakistan had reached a fever pitch, and that the United States needed to move to defuse it as quickly as possible. Defence Department officials balked. While they did not deny some American culpability in the episode, they said expressions of remorse offered by senior department officials and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were enough, until the completion of a United States military investigation establishing what went wrong. daily times monitor
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk