US wants Pakistan to exercise sovereignty across country
By Our Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Sept 6: The United States on Wednesday cautiously welcomed a truce between Pakistani authorities and tribal militants but also reminded Islamabad that it should not allow any part of the country to stay outside the government’s writ.
“It is in the interest of Pakistan and the Pakistani people that the government be able to exercise its sovereignty throughout all of Pakistan,” said US State Department’s spokesman Sean McCormack when asked to comment on the truce.
On Tuesday, militants in the restive North Waziristan tribal region signed a peace agreement with the government, pledging to halt cross-border movement and stop attacks on government installations and security forces.
In return, the government pledged not to undertake any ground or air operation against the militants and also to resolve the dispute through local customs and traditions.
The US official noted that the agreement was in Pakistan’s interest but said he was not aware of the details.
Mr McCormack, however, acknowledged that President Gen Pervez Musharraf did discuss the measures he planned to introduce in the tribal area with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she visited Islamabad in June.
“When Secretary Rice was last there, she did talk to President Musharraf about his approach in the tribal areas and he talked to her at length,” the spokesman said. “It was his presentation to her about how he was going to bring about an integrated civilian-military-political approach to the tribal areas to try to work with them on development as well as on the security aspects.”
The spokesman said that although the two leaders discussed the measures, the US made no contribution to the plan as ‘it was a Pakistani proposal.’
Mr McCormack described the issue of Pakistan’s sovereignty over the tribal belt ‘as a historical problem,’ noting that traditionally the region had not been under the control of the central government.
He indicated that while the US knew the ‘historical’ nature of this problem, it was not happy with the arrangement.
“Certainly everybody understands the importance of not having safe havens where you can have these ungoverned areas where Al Qaeda, the Taliban, other terrorist groups can plan and launch terrorist attacks not only against Afghans and international forces in Afghanistan but against Pakistanis and Pakistan.”
President Musharraf, he said, also had ‘a healthy appreciation’ of the situation and the US wanted to be ‘as supportive as we can in his efforts to build up those democratic political institutions in Pakistan.’
When a reporter told him that Pakistan planned to withdraw over 80,000 troops deployed in the tribal zone, the spokesman said he was not aware of the specifics of this agreement.
Asked what impact the intended withdrawal would have on the US-led war on terror in Afghanistan, the US official said that Afghanistan and Pakistan had ‘a shared interest’ in seeing that the border was controlled. It was in everybody’s interest if there were not safe havens along the border,” he added.
The spokesman conceded that this issue had been a source of tension in the past between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the two US allies in the war against terror. “What we have tried to do is to encourage them to talk and work together and to solve (their) problems privately as opposed to trying to do it in public which is sometimes a little bit harder.”
