ISLAMABAD: Pakistani and US officials yesterday emphasized the need for trust between their countries to counter the Al-Qaeda and the Taleban threat, but Pakistan’s foreign minister reiterated his government’s opposition to American airstrikes on its soil.
Pakistan is battling Islamist militants for its survival, President Asif Ali Zardari told Richard Holbrooke, special US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, who urged Pakistan to eliminate militant enclaves on the Afghan border, a newspaper reported yesterday.
“Pakistan is fighting a battle of its own survival,” Zardari’s office quoted him as telling Holbrooke and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Holbrooke and Mullen were visiting Pakistan on the heels of President Barack Obama’s announcement of plans to reinvigorate the war in Afghanistan by sending more troops to the region and boosting aid to Pakistan to help it stave off Al-Qaeda and Taleban-led militancy on its soil.
Pakistani leaders say they are happy about getting billions more dollars in assistance, but Obama’s insistence that the money won’t come without conditions — no “blank check” — has rankled some here and underscored a trust deficit between the two camps.
“We can only work together if we respect each other and trust each other,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmoud Qureshi said during a joint news conference. It was a sentiment echoed by Mullen, who said he was committed to improving the nations’ relationship.
“I think it’s important for us to seek a surplus of trust (instead of) a deficit of trust,” he said during the brief gathering. Pakistan’s civilian government points to the deaths of hundreds of Pakistani troops in battling insurgents along the Afghan frontier in questioning the line from Washington.
“Pakistan is committed in eliminating extremism from the society, for which it needs unconditional support by the international community in the fields of education, health, training and provision of equipment for fighting terrorism,” Zardari said in a statement after meeting the envoys.
In an interview yesterday with four US reporters traveling with Holbrooke, Zardari did not acknowledge that the Pakistan’s spy agency had helped the Taleban stage attacks inside Afghanistan, calling it “a supposition.”
Many Pakistanis also are irritated with US missile strikes on militant targets in the northwest, and the government has officially and repeatedly requested they be stopped because they inflame anti-American sentiment.
— With input from agencies
