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Saturday, October 22, 2011
Pak-US ties at risk over Haqqanis: Levin* US senator says US should be prepared to cut ties with Pakistan if it does not do more to battle Haqqani network
WASHINGTON: The United States should be prepared to cut ties with Pakistan if it does not do more to battle Haqqani network militants blamed for killing US forces in Afghanistan, a top senator said on Friday.
“If the only option Pakistan presents us is a choice between losing an ally and continuing to lose our troops, then we will choose the former,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Democrat.
Levin also warned that the United States reserved the right to strike at Haqqani fighters inside Pakistan if Islamabad – which denies supporting the group – will not do so itself.
“We have the right to target not only forces and artillery attacking our forces in Afghanistan from across the border in Pakistan, but to target the people controlling those forces as well,” the senator said.
Levin cited a news report that a drone strike recently killed a top Haqqani leader in the remote tribal areas of Pakistan and stressed that, if true, the attack was “an example of the kind of action that is overdue.”
The United States recently accused the Haqqanis of orchestrating a 19-hour siege of the US embassy in Kabul, a September truck bombing on a NATO outpost that wounded 77 Americans and a June attack on Kabul’s Inter Continental hotel.
And US military and diplomatic officials have blamed the Haqqanis for staging attacks inside Afghanistan that have killed US troops there. afp
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk