THE US called on Pakistan today to take action within “days and weeks” on dismantling Afghan militant havens and encouraging the Taliban into peace talks in order to end 10 years of 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 today locked in talks with Pakistani leaders following a four-hour session yesterday in Afghanistan designed to quicken 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 increased pressure on Pakistan to take concrete action but also sought to reassure Islamabad of long-term US support.
“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 Pakistani foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar.
The US was looking for operational action “over the next days and weeks, not months and years, but days and weeks because we have a lot of work to do to realise our shared goals,” emphasised Clinton.
Relations between Pakistan and the US deteriorated dramatically over the May 2 American special forces raid that killed Osama bin Laden near Islamabad and US accusations over the September 13 US embassy siege in Kabul.
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 embassy siege.
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 militant safe havens on its side of the border.
Pakistan has so far refused to open a new offensive against the Haqqani network in its leadership base in North Waziristan, arguing that its troops are too overstretched and that the country has already sacrificed too many lives.
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.
