News
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Dismantling terrorist havens, pushing Taliban to peace talksPakistan has ‘days and weeks’ to act: US
* Clinton says was looking to Pakistan for operational action over ‘not months and years, but days and weeks because we have a lot of work to do to realise our shared goals’
* Warns stern action must be taken if Taliban don’t cooperate
* Islamabad has a ‘critical role in supporting Afghanistan reconciliation and ending the conflict’
ISLAMABAD: The United States on Friday called on Pakistan to take action within “days and weeks” on dismantling Afghan terrorist havens and encouraging Taliban into peace talks in order to end the 10-year-old war.
Crucially, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared to extract recognition from Pakistan that it could do more in clamping down on Afghan insurgents using Pakistani soil to attack Americans but it offered no details on how.
The top US diplomat spent Friday locked in talks with Pakistani leaders following a four-hour session late Thursday in neighbouring Afghanistan designed to hasten an end to one of America’s longest wars.
Unusually accompanied by CIA director David Petraeus and the top US military officer General Martin Dempsey, she said Islamabad has a “critical role in supporting Afghanistan reconciliation and ending the conflict”.
“We look to Pakistan to take strong steps to deny Afghan insurgents safe havens and to encourage the Taliban to enter negotiations in good faith,” said Clinton after talks with Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar.
The United States was looking for operational action over “not months and years, but days and weeks because we have a lot of work to do to realise our shared goals,” emphasised Clinton.
Clinton warned that stern action would have to be taken against Afghan and Pakistani terrorists if they did not cooperate in efforts to stabilise Afghanistan and pursue peace.
Separately, in an interactive session with the civil society leaders, women and business leaders at a town hall-style forum, she termed the US-Pakistan relationship “critical” for both the countries that cannot be given up. “Despite frequently strained ties, we cannot walk away from the relationship,” Clinton said.
“We will stay the course and oversee the difficulties. We have too much at stake and cannot give it up,” Clinton said when asked how the US could extend support to enhance bilateral economic cooperation and the reconstruction opportunity zones.
Relations between Pakistan and the United States deteriorated dramatically over the American raid in Abbottabad on May 2.
The then top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, called the militant Haqqani network a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and accused its spies of being involved in the US embassy siege in Kabul.
In response, Pakistani leaders united behind calls to “give peace a chance” but Clinton said that in order to do that, “we have some work to do”.
With US and Afghan troops pressing a new offensive against the Haqqani network in eastern Afghanistan, Clinton called on Pakistan to up the pressure on terrorists safe havens on its side of the border.
“We asked very specifically for greater cooperation from the Pakistani side to squeeze the Haqqani network and other terrorists... Trying to eliminate terrorists and safe havens on one side of the border is not going to work,” she said.
“It’s not just military action. There is greater sharing of intelligence so we can prevent and intercept the efforts by the Haqqanis or the Taliban to try to cross the border or to plan an attack,” said Clinton.
Pakistani policy makers have argued that military operations offer limited gains and that now is the time to concentrate on a comprehensive reconciliation ahead of the planned NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Since siding with the US-led war on terror in 2001, Pakistan lost 3,000 soldiers in battle with the Taliban and thousands of civilians in bomb attacks. agencies
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk