May 23, 2008	Friday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 17, 1429

WASHINGTON, May 22: Senator Hillary Clinton took time out of her busy campaign schedule on Thursday to attend a Senate hearing where she expressed concern about Pakistan’s talks with militants in the tribal region.

She told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the US government had lost the initiative, “both militarily and diplomatically” in Pakistan and Afghanistan because of its preoccupation with Iraq.

“The recent announcement by the new Pakistani government, with respect to the agreement reached with the Taliban, is concerning to me,” she said, and asked Gen David Petraeus, the nominated commander for the US Central Command, if he had enough troops in Afghanistan to win the war against terrorists in Afghanistan.

The general said that while the US and its Nato allies were all sending additional troops to Afghanistan, “I am not sure that that will be all that are required.”

Referring to Senator Clinton’s statement on the Fata, Gen Petraeus said he too had “concerns” about the situation in the area.

“That is, of course, where Al Qaeda senior leadership is resonant. Their ability and the ability of the Taliban to send fighters from those areas into Afghanistan is very destabilising,” he added.

Senator Clinton, however, urged the administration to pay “a much greater amount of attention” to the Fata because, she said, she agreed with CIA Director Hayden that, if the US was going to suffer another attack on its own soil, it would most certainly originate from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

“Again, having said that, I think there clearly is more that can and should be done in helping the new government in Pakistan, because this is a Pakistani problem that … does create enormous violence inside Pakistan, (and) has global implications, as well.”

“Six-and-a-half years after 9/11, it is deeply troubling that we have not captured or killed or essentially decapitated the capacity of Al Qaeda under the leadership it had in 2001, which is still the leadership it has today,” commented Senator Clinton.