APC resolution doesn’t deter Obama

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

WASHINGTON/BRUSSELS - Only a day after Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told the country’s civilian and military leadership that Islamabad would not succumb to foreign pressure to “do more”, US President Barack Obama said on Friday that Washington would remain firm with Pakistan on the issue of Haqqani network safe havens and other militant organisations within its borders.
“We’ve tried to also preserve the intelligence cooperation that we’ve obtained that’s allowed us to go after al Qaeda in a very effective way,” Obama said in a radio interview with host Michael Smerconish. Obama credited Pakistan with “outstanding cooperation in going after al Qaeda” and vowed to keep working with Islamabad on the militant issue. “There’s no doubt that the relationship is not where it needs to be and we are going to keep on pressing them to recognise that it is in their interest - not just ours - to make sure that extremists are not operating within their borders,” Obama added.
When asked about the issue at the heart of a bitter row between Washington and Islamabad, the US president said Pakistan’s relationship to the militant Haqqani network was unclear, but he urged Islamabad to curb any active or passive support for the Taliban faction. “The intelligence is not as clear as we might like in terms of what exactly that relationship is,” he said. “But my attitude is, whether there is active engagement with Haqqani on the part of the Pakistanis or rather just passively allowing them to operate with impunity in some of these border regions, they’ve got to take care of this problem,” he told Smerconish.
The United States and Pakistan have been bickering publicly during the last week after outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said a violent Taliban faction was a “veritable arm” of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Asked if Mullen was correct, Obama said: “I think Mike’s testimony expressed frustration over the fact that safe havens exist, including the al Haqqani network safe haven, inside of Pakistan.”
NATO PRESSES PAKISTAN: Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen also piled pressure on Pakistan to step up the fight against “terrorists” enjoying safe havens in the border region with Afghanistan as he called for a “positive engagement” from Islamabad to ensure stability in Afghanistan. “We encourage the Pakistani military and the Pakistani government to do its utmost to fight extremism and terrorism in the border region,” Rasmussen said at a defence forum hosted by the European Policy Centre think tank.
“It is really a security problem for our troops in Afghanistan that terrorists have safe havens, and that’s a fact, in Pakistan. We have to deal with that and it’s in our mutual interest to deal with that,” he added. Rasmussen, however, called on Western governments to continue to work with Pakistan against Islamic extremists.
NO BOOTS ON THE GROUND: Separately, a senior US official told Reuters that Washington would not send ground troops into Pakistan to attack militant positions in North Waziristan. “There will be no boots on the ground,” the official said. “That has been communicated to them (the Pakistanis).” But the White House ramped up pressure on Islamabad, warning that the US would act on its own as it did against Osama bin Laden if Pakistan failed to deal with the Haqqani network.
“The fact of the matter is we are fighting a war in Afghanistan, and one of the problems we’ve had, which is where this issue arises from, is with the safe havens that the Haqqani network has in Pakistan,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters. Asked about discussions going on with the Pakistanis about military action that might go beyond drones, Carney said: “Certainly, we take action against the enemies of the United States - members of al Qaeda - where we find them. And as you know, in the case of Osama bin Laden, that happened to be in Pakistan.”
MULLEN: Meanwhile, Admiral Mullen said there could be no solution to the conflict in Afghanistan without Pakistan. “I continue to believe that there is no solution in the region without Pakistan, and no stable future in the region without a partnership,” Mullen said at a ceremony to handover to the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey.
TRILATERAL MOOT SCRAPPED: Mullen’s comments came as Afghanistan planned to suspend an effort to work with Pakistan and the US to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table, Afghan officials said. Senior US, Pakistani and Afghan officials had been set to meet in Kabul on October 8 to discuss ways to get insurgents into peace talks and end the 10-year-old conflict. Afghanistan has now decided to cancel the meeting, Deputy National Security Adviser Shaida Mohammad Abdali said.