| Submit your comments on this article |
| India-Pakistan |
| US should recognise Pakistan's interests in Afghanistan |
| 2007-03-05 |
| The Bush administration has been urged to recognise Pakistan’s legitimate interests in Afghanistan, such as its concerns about India, while remembering that it is an “article of faith” with Islamabad and part of its national security doctrine that the US is an “unreliable ally”. In an extended testimony before the Senate Armed Service Committee on March 1, Barnett R Rubin of the Centre on International Cooperation, New York University, said the US should try to encourage greater transparency concerning Indian activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He suggested that as the US increased pressure on Pakistan through the military assistance package, it needed to develop a multilateral approach with China because Pakistan, when it felt that the US was not supporting it, had tended to turn to China. “It tried to do that after the US-India nuclear deal last year, and China turned it down. So it would be very important to have a joint approach with China and the other NATO members on this as well,” he added. Rubin said Pakistan also needed assistance in building of its capacity to integrate the tribal areas into the country’s political and economic system. In the absence of integration, Pakistan had been unable to do anything about “safe havens” it was believed to provide to the Taliban and others, he said, adding that the US also needed to help Pakistan and Afghanistan address their bilateral relationship. “This is not a personal problem between Hamid Karzai and Gen Pervez Musharraf. There are a whole set of issues regarding the border, trade, transit, ethnic relations, that have gone un-addressed for 60 years, but we can no longer afford to allow them to go un-addressed.” He said if the US did not deal with the sanctuary problem, it would not succeed in Afghanistan, but it should be remembered that this was a “region problem”. He said that it was not that Pakistan was pro-terrorist, pretending to be anti-terrorist. Islamabad perceives the situation in Afghanistan in terms of its interests. Pakistan and Afghanistan have had antagonistic relations since the beginning. Rubin said the infrastructure built with US and Saudi help during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, was still there and being used by the same people to fight against the US, “including the same people in the Pakistan military and intelligence on the ground level who have been involved in this thing for 20 years, and are still there on the ground level and have not changed, even if their orders have changed”. Rubin said Musharraf’s “political problem” was that he was the head of the “largest political party in Pakistan, which is the Pakistan military”. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #2 Pakistan has used extremist as part of their foreign policy for decades. That and their saudi funders need looking at. |
| Posted by: Paul 2007-03-05 06:26 |
| #1 Okey Dokey, but what about IRAN's? IRAN > Labels PAKISTAN A "TERROR SANCTUARY", + IRAN FENCES IN PAKISTAN artiiiicle. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-03-05 00:42 |