Pakistain has told the United States it is ready to facilitate its talks with the Taliban, but cannot become a guarantor to the negotiating process, a security bigshot told Dawn on Saturday."Pakistain must not be blamed in case of failure of attempts (by US) for reconciliation with the Taliban as it does not spoon-feed them," the official remarked.
"Contact with the Haqqani group is there, but they are not in our pocket," was the message put across during a crucial meeting between the two sides on Friday.
The US delegation, headed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
... sometimes described as the Smartest Woman in the World and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as
Another Hamilton Fish...
, included the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Martin Dempsey and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief David Petreaus while Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, Chief of the Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani
... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI...
and the chief of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha represented Pakistain.
The official said the Taliban would themselves determine the propriety or otherwise of sitting at the negotiating table with the United States.
He said both sides felt that reconciliation was the way forward, but the devil lay in the detail. "The nitty-gritty of executing any prospective deal will test the acumen of all sides."
He said Pakistain had raised certain issues with
Hillary Clinton... sometimes described as the Smartest Woman in the World and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as
Another William H. Seward...
and both sides agreed that more work was needed.
He said Islamabad had made it clear to Washington that the "negotiating process must be Afghan-owned and Afghan-led".
The Taliban must not be pressed to abandon Al Qaeda, lay down arms and declare respect for the Afghan constitution before the talks, the US was advised. "We know the Afghan culture, they will never lay down their arms," he observed.
Pakistain had also spelt out its reservations to the US: it must not be forced into a strategy that the US itself is not going to follow on the other side of the border. The unambiguous message given to Washington was: an action against the Haqqani network in North Wazoo was not advisable as Pakistain cannot afford to open a new front at this stage.
According to the official, it was stressed that military operation should "complement the policy to work", but in the "absence of a clear policy nothing would work".