LONDON: Pakistan’s prime minister Thursday signaled his country’s cautious response to President Barack Obama’s new policy for Pakistan and Afghanistan by declining to endorse the US-led troop surge.
Instead, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said his government needs more information about Obama’s plan to expand the US military presence in Afghanistan and at the same time increase aid to Pakistan.
Gilani said Pakistan was looking into the policy announced by Obama on Tuesday, including the suggestion that more covert CIA resources would be deployed in Pakistan, where the central government faces a strong threat from Islamic extremists.
“Regarding the new policy of President Obama, we are studying that policy,” Gilani said during a joint news conference with his British counterpart Gordon Brown in London. “We need more clarity on it, and when we get more clarity on it, we can see what we can implement on that plan.” Unlike Brown, who strongly supports Obama’s approach and is sending 500 more British troops to Afghanistan to augment the surge, Pakistani leaders remained silent until Gilani’s carefully worded comments.
Analysts said the lack of a public endorsement of US policy is in part a response to rising anti-American sentiment in Pakistan that prevents national leaders from publicly embracing expanded US aid — even if they need the support.
Since 2001, the US has given the Pakistani army billions of dollars to try to get it to fight Islamic militants along the Afghan border. Starting last year, the US began a sustained program of covert missile strikes against militant targets close to the border.
The results have been mixed. While the army has taken on the Pakistani Taleban, it has failed to go after Afghan Taleban leaders who base their operations in the tribal areas in the border region. At the same time, anti-Western sentiment, spurred by the security forces, has grown.
Many Western officials and analysts believe Pakistan is playing off both sides - accepting US funds to crack down on Pakistani militants while tolerating the Afghan Taleban in the expectation that the radical Islamic movement will take power in Afghanistan once the Americans withdraw.
Shaun Gregory, an expert on Pakistani security at the University of Bradford in Britain, said the Pakistanis will take note of Obama’s pledge to start bringing US troops home from Afghanistan in July 2011.
“The Pakistanis are smart enough to read the signals coming out of Washington,” Gregory said. “It seems to me that the army’s longer-term strategy of broadly backing the Afghan Taleban is paying off now. They have their tails up.” Gilani said his government expects to learn more about US plans when Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visit Pakistan.
Gilani has been lukewarm to the idea of a troop surge, saying he fears it would merely push Afghan militants across the mountainous border region into Pakistan.
The US and Britain have been putting pressure on Pakistan to root out the militants already on its side of the border, in a lawless area from which they frequently attack NATO and Afghan troops.
Senior US officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have castigated Pakistan for its failure to find Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, believed by many to be hiding in tribal regions of Pakistan.
Gilani denied that Bin Laden is in Pakistan and said the US and Britain have not provided any actionable intelligence about his purported whereabouts.
The British leader used the press conference that followed a brief summit with Gilani to announce an expanded aid program aimed in part at helping Pakistan seize control of its border areas.
He said Britain was pledging 50 million pounds ($83 million) in new funding for that purpose.
Brown said that aid being provided by Britain would go into reconstruction, education and the relocation of people displaced in the fighting.
