News
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Military leaders to meet to salvage Pak-US tiesWASHINGTON: The top US and Pakistani military leaders will meet in the coming days in hopes of fixing strained ties after a US raid that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the Pentagon said on Thursday. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen and his Pakistani counterpart General Ashfaq Kayani will sit down for talks on the sidelines of a NATO conference beginning in Spain on Friday, Mullen’s spokesman Captain John Kirby told AFP. It will be the first meeting between the two since the May 2 nighttime military raid in which US Navy Seals, without first notifying Islamabad, killed the Al Qaeda leader in the compound in Abbottabad where he had been hiding. As relations worsened in the aftermath of the raid, Washington announced that it could cut some of the $2.7 billion in military aid it sends to Pakistan. Islamabad, for its part, ordered as many as 200 US military trainers out of the country in the aftermath of the operation. While relations are frayed, Pakistan is seen as key for US military operations in Afghanistan, where the United States is trying to beat down a resilient Taliban insurgency. Mullen plans to discuss “issues related to the increasing militant threat we face in Afghanistan” during his meeting with Kayani, Kirby said. afp
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk