NEWYORK/ISLAMABAD: An unusually powerful United States delegation has
arrived in Pakistan to deliver the warning that the United States would
act unilaterally, if necessary, to attack extremist groups that use the
country as a haven to kill Americans, according to a senior American
official.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Central
Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus and General Martin E
Dempsey, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, planned to push
their Pakistani counterparts to make a definitive choice between
fighting terrorists or supporting them, The New York Times quoted the
administration official, as saying.
"This is a time for
clarity," Clinton declared in Kabul, where she met Afghan President
Hamid Karzai before leaving for Islamabad. "No one should be in any way
mistaken about allowing this to continue without paying a very big
price."
"There’s no place to go any longer," Clinton added,
referring to Pakistan’s leaders, whom the administration has accused of
equivocating by supporting the Afghan insurgency.
The American
and Pakistani officials, who included the Pakistan Army chief General
Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the Inter-Services Intelligence Director
General Lt Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, met for four hours, ending after 2
am, the report said.
A senior administration official said
afterward that both sides had agreed to keep talking on Friday and did
not want to comment in the meantime, said the report, adding that
according to a Pakistani official, Petraeus met separately with Pasha.
Earlier, another senior Pakistani official said that Clinton’s remarks in Kabul did not "enable the atmosphere."
Her
comments, however, underscored a growing American realisation that
hopes for a smooth troops withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2014 now hinged
on Pakistan’s willingness to confront insurgent groups based in the
country who have had the support of Pakistan’s intelligence service.
According
to the report, before the meeting, which took place at the residence of
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, a senior administration official
said that the delegation would make it clear that if the Pakistanis did
not act against insurgents like the Haqqani network, then the US would
have to. Online
