Pakistan has offered a guarded response and stopped short of giving
any explicit statement on United States plans for Afghanistan's future
following the US President Barack Obama's announcement of a phased
withdrawal of 33,000 troops by September 2012.
The Pakistan
Foreign Office said in a terse statement that Pakistan has an "ongoing
engagement on issues of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan and
counter-terrorism".
"We will have the opportunity to discuss these issues in
greater detail when the core group of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US
will meet in Kabul early next week," the Foreign Office statement added.
However,
a foreign ministry official admitted that Islamabad has certain
reservations about the Washington's plans for the Afghan endgame.
"We
are cautious because we want to know more about President Obama's
plans," the Express Tribune quoted the official, as speaking on the
conditions of anonymity.
He said the Obama's deflection of blame
for the insurgency in neighbouring Afghanistan on Pakistan did not
reflect the ground facts. Pakistan is also sore about the US' attempts
to sideline it in its peace overtures with the Afghan Taliban, he said.
At
a joint news conference with visiting British Foreign Secretary William
Hague, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar also
sounded sceptical about the role of the US in the Afghan reconciliation
process.
US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen
had also acknowledged that Obama's plans to withdraw nearly a third the
US troops from Afghanistan was a riskier plan than he had initially
wanted. (ANI)
