Hillary says US won’t continue Pak aid without change

WASHINGTON: While US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday the US could slow down military aid to Pakistan, unless it took unspecified steps to help the United States, President Barack Obama vowed a day earlier his country will “insist” Pakistan fulfil its promises to counter militant sanctuaries on its soil.

“We will work with the Pakistani government to root out the cancer of violent extremism, and we will insist that it keep its commitments,” Obama said in a televised speech on troop withdrawal plans for the war in Afghanistan.

In blunt language, Obama made clear he was ready to order more assaults against any safe-havens harbouring those who aimed to kill Americans. “For there should be no doubt that so long as I am president, the United States will never tolerate a safe-haven for those who aim to kill us: they cannot elude us, nor escape the justice they deserve,” he said.

Referring to Pakistan, Obama said “no country is more endangered by the presence of violent extremists.” The US president said his government would “continue to press Pakistan to expand its participation in securing a more peaceful future for this war-torn region.”

Before his speech, Obama telephoned his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday, officials in Islamabad said. Barack Obama said the relationship between the US and Pakistan has become more honest over time.

Talking to Voice of America, Obama said that post-Osama troubled ties with Islamabad were being normalised as Pakistan was showing honesty. “That raises some differences that are real,” the president said. “Obviously, the operation to take out Osama bin Laden created additional tensions, but I had always been very clear to Pakistan that if we ever found him [bin Laden] and had a shot, that we would take it.”

President Obama said: “Pakistan not only has a responsibility but also a deep interest in dealing with terrorist elements that are still in their territory.” Hillary Clinton said the US could slow down the military aid to Pakistan, unless it took unspecified steps to help her country. Clinton made the point when Senator Robert Menendez worried that Washington had provided $2.7 billion in security assistance last year to Islamabad only to see officials there shield al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and others.

“When it comes to our military aid .... we are not prepared to continue providing that at the pace we were providing it unless and until we see certain steps taken,” Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“We’re trying to... play this orchestra the best we can, where we... look in one direction and say to those who we think are largely responsible for the difficulties we know that exist within Pakistan... you can’t continue doing that,” she said.

But she said the picture was not completely bleak. “On the other hand, we have a democratically elected government which has made some courageous decisions despite the challenges,” Clinton said, citing the move to unleash the Pakistani military on the Pakistani Taliban. “Now, is it a strong democratic government? No. But it is a step in the right direction,” she said.

She urged patience, recalling that Washington has in the past worked with other countries that “just drove us crazy” even though some later turned out to have been worth the trouble.

Clinton also said US officials did not believe top Pakistani officials knew that Osama bin Laden had been hiding in Abbottabad. “In looking at every scrap of information we have, we think that the highest levels of the government were genuinely surprised,” Clinton said. To be sure, top officials believed bin Laden must have been hiding in the lawless tribal areas near the Afghanistan border, she said. “But they did not know and we have no reason to believe that they are running some massive deception on us to ....that point,” she said, referring to bin Laden’s Abbottabad hideout.

Hillary Clinton also cautioned against the notion of US walking away from Pakistan relationship yet again, and underscoring the South Asian country’s strategic importance noted that Pakistan must be part of the process towards stability in Afghanistan.

Clinton told sceptical lawmakers that “positive steps” since May 2 raid on Osama bin Laden compound in Abbottabad - which strained ties between the two countries — should not be overlooked. She argued that Washington should not repeat the mistake of abandoning Pakistan as it did in 1989 after Soviet pullout from Afghanistan. “America cannot and should not try to solve Pakistan’s problems; they have to eventually do that themselves. But nor can we walk away from this relationship and ignore the consequences, for all the reasons that Senator (Richard) Lugar (Ranking Republican of the panel) outlined in his opening statement: Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state sitting at the crossroads of a strategic region,” she said in her opening statement.

Clinton told legislators that the US relationship with neighbouring Pakistan has been complicated and there have been frustrations but emphasised there was no alternative to continued engagement with the key South Asian country.

“We have seen this movie before. We have seen the cost of disengaging from the region. As (Defence) Secretary (Robert) Gates, who was there at that time, has stressed, we cannot repeat the mistakes of 1989,” she said at the hearing, chaired by Senator John Kerry, who called for listening to Pakistan to secure American interests in the region.

The United States, she said, has “clear expectations for this relationship,” and as President Obama said Wednesday night, the United States will “never tolerate a safe haven for those who kill Americans.”

“We are looking to Pakistan to take concrete actions on the goals we share: Defeating violent extremism, which has also taken so many innocent Pakistani lives; ending the conflict in Afghanistan; and securing a stable, democratic, prosperous future.

“Now, these are obviously tough questions to ask of the Pakistanis and there are many causes for frustration. But we should not overlook the positive steps of just recent weeks since May 2nd: Counterterrorism cooperation continues and several very key extremists have been killed or captured.”

“We would not disagree at all with Senator Lugar’s comment that this is a very strategic situation for us, for the United States and we have to do more to get it right. So, we are going to continue to make clear our expectations, we are going to continue to try to work with them across the entire political spectrum, we are going to demand more from them but we are not going to expect any miracles overnight.”

She termed forging the relationship as a “long-term” and sometimes “frustrating experience” but said she did not see “any alternative” in terms of “vital American national interest.”

“What we call the Core Group Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States” has met twice and will convene again next week. At the same time, we are engaging the region around a common vision of an independent, stable Afghanistan and a region free of al-Qaeda. We believe we’ve made progress with all of the neighbours, including India, Russia, and even Iran.”

Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates told AFP success was possible in the war in Afghanistan even if Pakistan fails to fully cooperate in countering militants along its border. With Pakistan taking some positive steps, Gates said: “I think that as long as the picture stays mixed like that, that we can be successful.”

Flagging American public support for the war was a key factor in deciding to bring all 33,000 US surge troops home from Afghanistan by next summer, Gates added.