Biden says US committed to help Pakistan fight terror
US vice president-elect Joe Biden on Friday assured Pakistan’s
leaders of the incoming Obama administration’s commitment to helping
Islamabad fight extremists, the government here said.
Biden, who takes office on January 20 with president-elect Barack
Obama, made the remarks in talks with Pakistan’s president, prime
minister and army chief at the start of a regional tour with Republican
senator Lindsey Graham.
Although Biden’s office has stressed he is in the region in his
capacity as a senator, the trip is likely to be seen as carrying more
weight, given Obama’s plans to shift the focus in the US-led “war on
terror” to South Asia.
An aide to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said talks had
focused on Islamabad’s ongoing contribution to the US-led “war on
terror” as well as strained relations between India and Pakistan
following the Mumbai attacks.
Zardari told Biden that “Pakistan was committed to fighting terrorism
and extremism in its own interest,” the president’s office said in a
statement. Biden in turn assured Zardari that the new US administration
would support Pakistan’s counter-terrorism efforts, adding that
Washington recognised Islamabad’s “important contribution and sacrifices
in the fight”.
The Delaware senator, who will soon surrender his seat and his post
as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reiterated the
message in talks with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
Biden said the new administration “fully realised that Pakistan alone
could not fight this war and hence would support it in every way
possible to succeed,” the prime minister’s office said.
Biden also met with army chief General Ashfaq Kayani, officials from
both sides said. The US embassy, in a brief statement, confirmed Biden
and Graham’s meetings without elaborating on the substance of the
talks.Obama has outlined a new strategy for the region that emphasises
ending the conflict in Afghanistan.
The United States will deploy up to 30,000 extra troops in
Afghanistan this year to help quell the Taliban-led insurgency that has
gripped that country for seven years and spilled across the border into
Pakistan.
Pakistan’s lawless rugged tribal areas along the border are home to
hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists who fled Afghanistan after
the hardline Taliban regime was ousted from power in a US-led invasion
in late 2001.
The commander of US forces in the Middle East and Central Asia,
General David Petraeus, suggested Thursday that ending the conflict in
Afghanistan required “a regional approach” including Pakistan, India and
perhaps Iran.
“The way forward in Afghanistan is incomplete without a strategy that
includes and assists Pakistan,” Petraeus said in Washington.
CIA drone aircraft are believed to have launched more than two dozen
missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas since August, including one
on January 1 that local officials said killed the head of Al-Qaeda in
Pakistan and his deputy.
Officials believe Usama al-Kini, described as Al-Qaeda’s chief of
operations in Pakistan, was behind the truck bombing of Islamabad’s
Marriott Hotel last September, and was connected to the 1998 bombings of
US embassies in Africa.
Pakistan has repeatedly protested to the United States that the drone
strikes violate its territorial sovereignty, but some officials say
there is a tacit understanding between the US and Pakistani militaries
to allow them.
Gilani told Biden he hoped Washington would provide military support
and equipment to Pakistan so that the “major issue of drone attacks...
will be eliminated.”
Biden also came here to discuss simmering tensions between India and
Pakistan in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, which killed 165 civilians
and security personnel. (AFP)
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