WASHINGTON: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Pakistan will
suffer “dire consequences” if it fails to “contain” terrorists operating
from its soil, and it needs the US and Afghanistan to help get the job
done.
The Obama administration isn’t asking Pakistan’s military
to occupy its rugged border regions, the base for extremist groups that
attack U.S., allied and Afghan forces on the other side, Clinton said in
an interview with Bloomberg News following two days of meetings in
Islamabad.
There are “different ways of fighting besides overt military action,” she said.
Clinton
said she pressed Pakistan to fully share intelligence with U.S. forces
in Afghanistan to prevent attacks and choke off money and supply routes.
Better coordination might prevent incidents like the Sept. 20 assault
on the American Embassy in Kabul, which the U.S. blames on the Haqqani
network, she said.
"We can go after funding. We can go after couriers,’’ she said she told Pakistani leaders.
Already
strained ties with Pakistan were exacerbated by the U.S. commando
assault in May that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden near
Islamabad. Clinton, along with CIA Director David Petraeus and General
Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Prime
Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Army
Chief of Staff, and Ahmad Shuja Pasha, head of the Inter-Services
Intelligence Directorate.
Clinton praised recent cooperation
against al-Qaeda as a model for how to crack down on the Haqqanis as
well as the Taliban, based in Pakistan’s southwestern city of Quetta.
“Because
of intelligence sharing and mutual cooperation, we have targeted three
of the top al-Qaeda operatives since bin Laden’s death. That could not
have happened without Pakistani cooperation,” she said.
Pakistan’s
political parties came together last month behind a resolution to seek
talks and a cease-fire with insurgents rather than an all-out military
assault. Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani urged the
Americans “to give peace a chance” before pressing his military for
more, he said in a statement.
Clinton said the U.S. message to
Pakistan was that the same insurgents who have launched lethal attacks
against U.S. and Afghan targets may unleash their violence inside
Pakistan.
Clinton said she urged Pakistan’s leaders to take
advantage of the roughly 130,000-troop, U.S.-led NATO force next door in
Afghanistan while it’s still there. The U.S. and NATO have begun
pulling out troops and plan to hand full security control to
Afghanistan’s government by the end of 2014.
In the coming
months, forces from Pakistan and the coalition in Afghanistan should
“squeeze” the Taliban and allied extremists, such as the Haqqani
network, which operate on both sides of the border.
“There’s no
way that any government in Islamabad can control these groups,” Clinton
said in the interview, conducted in Tajikistan as she wrapped up a
seven-nation trip across the Mideast and south-central Asia.
There
is an “opportunity, while we are still with 48 nations across the
border in Afghanistan, where we have a lot of assets that we can put at
their disposal” to help Pakistan.
The Pakistanis said they “have
to figure out a way to do it that doesn’t cause chaos” in their
country, she recounted. She said the U.S. and Pakistan agreed on “90 to
95 percent of what needs to be done” and the two countries will work on
what “next steps we take together.”
Before retiring as chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last month, Admiral Mike Mullen testified
before Congress that the Haqqani network is a “veritable arm” of
Pakistan’s spy agency, sparking angry denials from Islamabad.
U.S.
and Afghan troops have recently begun what they call “enhanced
operations” against guerrillas in Afghanistan’s Khost province, which
abuts the Pakistani region where the Haqqani network is based.
Asked
if U.S. troops in Afghanistan will launch cross- border attacks if
Pakistan fails to act, Clinton replied, “There’s a lot going on that is
aimed at these safe havens, and we will continue to work with them on
that.”
Clinton also defended U.S. efforts of encourage the
Afghans and Pakistanis to seek negotiations to disarm militants.
Reconciliation efforts have gone nowhere since Clinton announced the
Obama administration’s support for talks early last year. A Taliban
agent posing as a peace envoy assassinated Afghanistan’s chief peace
negotiator, Burhanuddin Rabbani, on Sept. 13.
Negotiations are
“a bumpy process” requiring “patience and persistence that we’re willing
to invest, in order to determine what’s real and what’s not,” she said. Online
