Washington: Following America”s decision to designate Al-Qaeda linked Haqqani network as a global terrorist organization, U.S. officials have said there is no move by the country to begin the process of designating Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism.
“I want to just unequivocally state that this in no way is the consensus, unanimous view of this administration, that we are making absolutely no effort to begin a process to designate Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism,” the Daily Times quoted a senior administration official, as saying.
The statement came after former chairman of the U.S.Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen had last year termed the Haqqani network a veritable arm of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan.
“If anything they (Pakistan) have been an extremely valuable ally in countering extremism and terrorism, and we are committed to continuing and maintaining and increasing that coordination and cooperation,” the official added.
“We have always said that we are troubled by safe havens that the network has in Pakistan and that we will continue to work together with the Pakistanis to squeeze this, and there”s more that we can do. This is part of that ongoing effort,” the official said.
Another senior administration official said there had been a misperception that there was some kind of relationship between a Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTO) designation and a state sponsorship one.
“In plenty of countries, we have had groups designated and it”s never made any difference in terms of our deliberations regarding the bilateral relationship with that country, except of course to strengthen our resolve to work with them to deal with their extremism problem,” he said.
“The issue of state sponsorship of terrorism is wholly separate and completely different from designating individual terrorist networks,” Patrick Ventrell, a State Department spokesman, said.
“We”ve been concerned about safe havens. We continue to raise with the Pakistanis our desire for more pressure on the Haqqanis. It”s something that we raise with them frequently, and we will continue to do so,” Ventrell added. (ANI)