NEW YORK: Pakistan’s foreign minister said on Thursday the United
States risks losing an ally if it continues to publicly criticise
Islamabad’s performance in the war against militancy.
"You will
lose an ally," Hina Rabbani Khar told a private TV channel in New York.
"You cannot afford to alienate Pakistan, you cannot afford to alienate
the Pakistani people. If you are choosing to do so and if they are
choosing to do so it will be at their (the United States’) own cost."
Khar was responding to Senate testimony by the outgoing chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who said Pakistan’s top spy
agency was closely tied to the Haqqani Network, the most violent and
effective faction in the Afghan Taliban insurgency.
Mullen said
on Thursday that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI)
played a role in the September 13 attack on the US embassy in Kabul,
supporting militants known as the Haqqani network.
That network, he said, is a "veritable arm" of the ISI.
"At
the operational level it will be appropriate to say that there are
serious difficulties (between the two countries)," Khar told the
channel In a separate interview with India’s NDTV, Khar added:
"Pointing fingers at each other will not help. Finding scapegoats will
not help ... We want to be a mature, responsible country that is
fighting terrorism with a lot of maturity." Online
