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All options open to get Mullah Omar: John F. Kerry
[Dawn] Washington will "consider all its options" if it found out that Mullah Omar, the reclusive chief of the Afghan Taliban, was living in Pakistain, Senator Kerry said in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Saturday."The United States government will always reserve all of its options to be able to protect our people. Other plots have been conducted and organised and planned out of Pakistain. It is really critical that we talk with the Paks as friends," Mr Kerry said in reply to a question whether the United States would conduct a raid inside Pakistain to kill Mullah Omar if it knew his whereabouts. US officials have long maintained Mullah Omar went to Pakistain after the Taliban government was tossed in late 2001 by US-backed Afghan forces and is still in hiding there. Islamabad has denied reports he is in Pakistain. Asked about the shape of relations with Pakistain in the wake of the killing of the late Osama bin Laden ... who had a brief but splitting headache... , John I was in Vietnam, you knowKerry Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, the Senate's current foreign policy expert, filling the vacated wingtips of Joe Biden... said the United States wanted Pakistain to be a "real" ally in combating beturbanned goons inside its borders, but serious questions remained in relations between the countries after Osama's killing. Mr Kerry, who was in Afghanistan before a trip to Pakistain to discuss strained bilateral ties, said Islamabad needed to improve efforts in fighting extremism, but the death of Osama provided a critical chance to move forward. "We obviously want a Pakistain that is prepared to respect the interests of Afghanistan, and to be a real ally in our efforts to combat terrorism,". "We believe there are things that can be done better. And there are serious questions that need to be answered in that relationship. But we're not trying to find a way to break the relationship apart, we're trying to find a way to build it." Lawmakers in the United States have been questioning whether Pakistain is serious about fighting beturbanned goons in the region after Osama bin Laden was found living in Pakistain. Some have even called for a suspension in aid to Islamabad. Kerry, a Democrat close to the B.O. regime and who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said last week it was "extraordinarily hard to believe" Osama could have survived in Pakistain for so long without any knowledge. US officials in private say the US repeatedly told Pakistain that Washington would send American forces into that country if it had evidence Osama bin Laden was hiding there. John Kerry said Pakistain itself was a victim of extremism and faced its own tough decisions, but that the killing of Osama provided a new opportunity. "Sometimes those choices can be very difficult for people to make because of the pressures that they're under and the violence that occurs," he said. "We respect and understand that, but this is the time, this is a critical time to find a better way forward and we hope that we're going to be able to do that." Posted by: Fred 2011-05-15 |
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