ISLAMABAD: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hit out Friday against Pakistan’s silence on the whereabouts of Al-Qaeda leaders, wrapping up a goodwill visit cautiously welcomed despite lingering distrust.
Clinton said Pakistan would never escape terror without disposing of Al-Qaeda.
“We don’t know where and I have no information that they know where but this is a big government. You know, it’s a government on many levels. Somebody, somewhere in Pakistan must know where these people are,” she said.
“And we’d like to know because we view them as really at the core of the terrorist threat that threatens Pakistan, threatens Afghanistan, threatens us, threatens people all over the world,” Clinton told radio journalists. “I think it is absolutely clear and I am convinced that you will never rid Pakistan of the threat of terrorism unless you rid it of Al-Qaeda.”
One day earlier she appeared to lose patience during a face-to-face meeting with senior editors, taking issue with Pakistan’s official line doubting that Osama Bin Laden and his senior lieutenants are in Pakistan.
“I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,” she had said. She defended her comments in a series of morning television interviews aired in the United States on Friday. “I wanted to get that out on the table, because the Pakistanis have talked about a trust deficit and it’s a two-way street,” Clinton said in an interview shown on NBC’s “Today Show.” “We have questions, they have questions.”
In an interview aired on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Clinton said the two countries needed to be more open with each other. “I want to have the kind of relationship where we really are talking honestly about everything between us — because there’s just too much at stake,” she said.
