ISLAMABAD: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned on Friday that stern action would have to be taken against militants if they did not cooperate in efforts to stabilise Afghanistan and pursue peace.
Such efforts would focus on getting the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network, involved, Clinton said in the Pakistani capital.
”Now we have to turn our attention here on the Pakistani Taliban, Afghan Taliban, Haqqani and other terrorist groups and try to get them into a peace process,” Clinton told a news conference in Islamabad.
”But if that failed, prevent them from committing more violence and murdering more innocent people,” she said.
Pakistan is seen as critical to the US drive to end the conflict in Afghanistan, but it is often an uneasy relationship.
On Thursday, Clinton and top US military and intelligence officials delivered a tough message to Pakistani leaders to crack down on militants, especially groups like the Haqqanis that are blamed for attacks on American targets in Afghanistan. Pressure on Pakistan has been mounting since US special forces found and killed Osama bin Laden in May in a Pakistani town, where he had apparently been living for years. The secret raid caused the worst damage to relations between the allies since Pakistan joined the US war on militancy after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Pakistan’s military said the raid was a flagrant violation of sovereignty, while in Washington US officials wondered whether an ally that receives billions of dollars in American aid had been sheltering the world’s most wanted man.
Pakistan denied any links to bin Laden and says it has sacrificed more than any country supporting the US ”war on terror”.
In a news conference with Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, Clinton said she urged Pakistan to cooperate more on the issue of the Haqqani network, which Washington believes is based in North Waziristan near the Afghan border. Admiral Mike Mullen said before retiring as chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff last month that the Haqqanis were a ”veritable arm” of Pakistani intelligence, infuriating Islamabad. ”We asked very specifically for greater cooperation from the Pakistani side to squeeze the Haqqani network and other terrorists because we know that trying to eliminate terrorists and safe havens on one side of the border is not going to work,” said Clinton. (PTI)