Washington: The US would keep on pressing
Pakistan to act decisively against all terror groups within
its territory as "just knocking down Taliban somewhere" does
not affect the militants` widespread syndicate, Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton has said.
"We are going to keep pressing (Pakistan). This is the
highest priority to us," she told the popular Charlie Rose
show.
The US is encouraged and supportive of what Pakistan is
doing and wants "more help against our common enemy," Clinton
said.
Asked if she is convinced that Pakistan now understands
that the Taliban is their enemy, she said Islamabad is now
"evidencing that."
Clinton, who was recently in Pakistan, said Pakistanis
understand too "that you can`t just play Whack-A-Mole" -- a
machine game where moles begin to pop up from holes at random
and the aim is to force the individual moles back into their
holes by hitting them directly on the head with the mallet.
"You can`t just knock down the Taliban somewhere and
expect you`re done, because they have unfortunately created
this syndicate, this network of interconnected terrorist
groups," she said. "So the Pakistanis have to be vigilant."
The top US diplomat said that in her conversations with
both civilian government leaders and military intelligence,
she found an awareness that the Taliban is not just about
somebody else`s fight, "it is a direct attack on the authority
of the Pakistani Government".
"When you have extremists attacking your General army
headquarters, your intelligence offices, who go right at
the Islamic University in Islamabad, this is not some foreign
plot," Clinton said.
"These are people, homegrown, who want to overthrow
various aspects of the Pakistani government and control
territory within the boundaries of Pakistan. So there`s no
doubt in my mind that they see this as a direct threat," the
Secretary of State said.
Clinton said she did raise the issue of the Pakistani
establishment not knowing the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden,
after listening to the Pakistani concerns about the US.
"We find it hard to believe that nobody knows where
the al-Qaeda leadership is. And I think that there is no
evidence that anybody in the government at the top levels
knows," she said.
Clinton said the US was trying to make Pakistani accept
"the fact that the al-Qaeda leadership is arrayed against them
as well and still poses a direct threat to us".
In a separate interview, Clinton said she believed
Pakistan`s nuclear weapons were secure and protected, but
maintained that the safe havens for al-Qaeda and Taliban
terrorists in the country were "very troubling".
Clinton said capturing and killing al-Qaeda leadership
was "a very high priority" for the Obama administration and
Pakistan`s help was needed in order to achieve that.
Asked if she still feared that intelligence services in
Pakistan were not reliable, Clinton said: "Not at the highest
level".
Bureau Report
