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Stepping up the pressure, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has asked Pakistan to go after the Haqqani network that is thought to have carried out the rocket attacks on the American embassy in Kabul last week.
The issue figured prominently a marathon meeting that Clinton held with Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar in New York, lasting three and a half hours.
Counter-terrorism dominated the deliberations to the point that a State Department official commented that it was the first issue and the last issue on the agenda for the talks.
Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) was part of the conversation, the official said while briefing reporters. The US also brought up the issue of safe havens in Pakistan and enablers who allow Pakistan-based militants to attack inside of Afghanistan.
“The Pakistani side talked to us about the continuing threat from the TTP (Therik-i-Taliban Pakistan) on the Pakistanis,” the official said.
Secretary Clinton gave out the “clear” message that the issue of Haqqani network had to be dealt with, casting the outfit as a threat to both the US and Pakistan. “What we said was that this is a huge problem and that Pakistan’s got to deal with it,” the official said, without going into specifics.
Asked about the extraordinarily long meeting between the two, the official said Clinton wanted to “really sit down with the Foreign Minister of Pakistan…..and have a conversation about where Pakistan and the United States were headed.”
The idea was that if two or three hours were set aside, it would make for a “candid” and “open” session, affording a review of the whole range of activities.
Part of the conversation concluded that joint efforts need to be made to end the threat from the Haqqanis, instead of the two working separately. Both committed themselves to working on this as a matter of priority, the official said.
A full range of other issues important to both countries were dealt with, including an “Afghan-led and Afghan-owned reconciliation”.
“We talked a lot about our joint goals for reconciliation, our joint support for an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led process. And we agreed that this was, first of all, extremely difficult, very complicated, but something that certainly the two countries needed to continue to work on,” the State Department official said.
As part of the economic questions for the region, Secretary Clinton “talked about the idea of the New Silk Road, this vision of an economic space between Central Asia and India, Bangladesh that she talked about at the speech in Chennai in India”.
The Pakistani Minister brought up the issue of market access and the reconstruction opportunity zones.
Before the Clinton-Khar meeting, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen held a separate meeting with Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in Serville, Spain, where the two are reported to have discussed the complicated relationship between the two countries.
“Admiral Mullen conveyed his deep concerns about the increasing — and increasingly brazen —activities of the Haqqani network and restated his strong desire to see the Pakistani military take action against them and their safe havens in North Waziristan,” the New York Times quoted a Mullen aide as saying.
The issue figured prominently a marathon meeting that Clinton held with Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar in New York, lasting three and a half hours.
Counter-terrorism dominated the deliberations to the point that a State Department official commented that it was the first issue and the last issue on the agenda for the talks.
Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) was part of the conversation, the official said while briefing reporters. The US also brought up the issue of safe havens in Pakistan and enablers who allow Pakistan-based militants to attack inside of Afghanistan.
“The Pakistani side talked to us about the continuing threat from the TTP (Therik-i-Taliban Pakistan) on the Pakistanis,” the official said.
Secretary Clinton gave out the “clear” message that the issue of Haqqani network had to be dealt with, casting the outfit as a threat to both the US and Pakistan. “What we said was that this is a huge problem and that Pakistan’s got to deal with it,” the official said, without going into specifics.
Asked about the extraordinarily long meeting between the two, the official said Clinton wanted to “really sit down with the Foreign Minister of Pakistan…..and have a conversation about where Pakistan and the United States were headed.”
The idea was that if two or three hours were set aside, it would make for a “candid” and “open” session, affording a review of the whole range of activities.
Part of the conversation concluded that joint efforts need to be made to end the threat from the Haqqanis, instead of the two working separately. Both committed themselves to working on this as a matter of priority, the official said.
A full range of other issues important to both countries were dealt with, including an “Afghan-led and Afghan-owned reconciliation”.
“We talked a lot about our joint goals for reconciliation, our joint support for an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led process. And we agreed that this was, first of all, extremely difficult, very complicated, but something that certainly the two countries needed to continue to work on,” the State Department official said.
As part of the economic questions for the region, Secretary Clinton “talked about the idea of the New Silk Road, this vision of an economic space between Central Asia and India, Bangladesh that she talked about at the speech in Chennai in India”.
The Pakistani Minister brought up the issue of market access and the reconstruction opportunity zones.
Before the Clinton-Khar meeting, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen held a separate meeting with Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in Serville, Spain, where the two are reported to have discussed the complicated relationship between the two countries.
“Admiral Mullen conveyed his deep concerns about the increasing — and increasingly brazen —activities of the Haqqani network and restated his strong desire to see the Pakistani military take action against them and their safe havens in North Waziristan,” the New York Times quoted a Mullen aide as saying.
