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White House urges Islamabad to break ties with Haqqanis
ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON: Pakistan warned the United States it risks losing an ally if it continued to accuse Islamabad of playing a double game in the war against militancy, escalating the crisis in relations between the two countries.
Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was responding to comments by US Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, who said Pakistan’s top spy agency was closely tied to the Haqqani network, the most violent and effective faction among Taleban militants in Afghanistan.
It is the most serious allegation leveled by the United States against nuclear-armed and Muslim-majority Pakistan since they began an alliance in the “war on terror” a decade ago.
“You will lose an ally,” Khar told Geo TV in New York in remarks broadcast on Friday.
“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.” Mullen, speaking in Senate testimony, alleged Haqqani operatives launched an attack last week on the US embassy in Kabul with the support of Pakistan’s military intelligence.
Meanwhile, the White House urged Pakistan on Friday to break any links it has with the Haqqani militant network and to take action to shut down their safe havens along the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the Haqqani network was responsible for the recent attack on the US Embassy in Kabul and other assaults in Afghanistan that have killed American troops. He said the militants operate from safe havens in Pakistan that Islamabad has failed to shut down.
“It is critical that the government of Pakistan break any links they have and take strong and immediate action against this network so that they are no longer a threat to the United States or to the people of Pakistan, because this network is a threat to both,” he said.
A complete break between the United States and Pakistan — sometimes friends, often adversaries — seems unlikely, if only because Washington depends on Pakistan for supply routes to US troops fighting militants in Afghanistan, and as a base for unmanned US drones.
Pakistan relies on Washington for military and economic aid and for acting as a backer on the world stage.
“The message for America is: ‘They can’t live with us, they can’t live without us,” Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told reporters.
But support in the US Congress for curbing assistance or making conditions on aid more stringent is rising rapidly.
The unilateral US Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in May took already fragile relations between Pakistan and the United States to a low.
Relations were just starting to recover before the Kabul attack. Both sides are now engaged in an unusually blunt public war of words.
ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON: Pakistan warned the United States it risks losing an ally if it continued to accuse Islamabad of playing a double game in the war against militancy, escalating the crisis in relations between the two countries.
Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was responding to comments by US Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, who said Pakistan’s top spy agency was closely tied to the Haqqani network, the most violent and effective faction among Taleban militants in Afghanistan.
It is the most serious allegation leveled by the United States against nuclear-armed and Muslim-majority Pakistan since they began an alliance in the “war on terror” a decade ago.
“You will lose an ally,” Khar told Geo TV in New York in remarks broadcast on Friday.
“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.” Mullen, speaking in Senate testimony, alleged Haqqani operatives launched an attack last week on the US embassy in Kabul with the support of Pakistan’s military intelligence.
Meanwhile, the White House urged Pakistan on Friday to break any links it has with the Haqqani militant network and to take action to shut down their safe havens along the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the Haqqani network was responsible for the recent attack on the US Embassy in Kabul and other assaults in Afghanistan that have killed American troops. He said the militants operate from safe havens in Pakistan that Islamabad has failed to shut down.
“It is critical that the government of Pakistan break any links they have and take strong and immediate action against this network so that they are no longer a threat to the United States or to the people of Pakistan, because this network is a threat to both,” he said.
A complete break between the United States and Pakistan — sometimes friends, often adversaries — seems unlikely, if only because Washington depends on Pakistan for supply routes to US troops fighting militants in Afghanistan, and as a base for unmanned US drones.
Pakistan relies on Washington for military and economic aid and for acting as a backer on the world stage.
“The message for America is: ‘They can’t live with us, they can’t live without us,” Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told reporters.
But support in the US Congress for curbing assistance or making conditions on aid more stringent is rising rapidly.
The unilateral US Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in May took already fragile relations between Pakistan and the United States to a low.
Relations were just starting to recover before the Kabul attack. Both sides are now engaged in an unusually blunt public war of words.
