WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama will ask Pakistan to do more to fight terrorists when he meets Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Washington on Oct 22, says the White House.

At a news briefing here, Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Mr Sharif had accepted the invitation for a meeting with Mr Obama at the White House. US National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice delivered the invitation to Mr Sharif at a meeting in Islamabad on Sunday.

Mr Earnest said the US was “looking forward to that visit” because it had “a lot of important issues to discuss” with the Pakistani leader,

“We have indicated on a number of occasions that there is more work we believe that the Pakistani government can do to confront extremist groups and others that pose a security threat to the interest of the Pakistani people as well as the national security interests of the United States,” he said.

“And that certainly was part of the discussion that Ambassador Rice had with the Pakistani officials, and I’m confident that will be on the agenda when Prime Minister Sharif visits the United States later this fall.”

At the latest White House and State Department news briefings, US officials not only endorsed the perception that certain terrorist groups were still using the Pakistani territory to carry out attacks inside Afghanistan but also repeated the US demand for Pakistan to “do more” in the fight against terrorism.

The demand for “doing more” than what Pakistan was already doing was a regular feature at such briefings between 2011 and 2013, when relations between the two countries had reached a new low. But the phrase was rarely used after an improvement in relations.

Mr Earnest did not directly answer the question when asked if Ambassador Rice had also assured Pakistani leaders that the US would release the next tranche of $300 million from the Coalition Support Fund withheld after the latest terrorist attacks in Kabul.

“Let me just say as a general matter that the first item on the national security adviser’s agenda was the security relationship between the United States and Pakistan,” he said.

At the State Department, spokesman Mark Toner said Ms Rice shared with Pakistani leaders “our assessment of the sources of regional violence as well as discussed ways to reduce this violence and to return the region to peace and stability”.

Describing South Asia as “a very dynamic region,” Mr Toner said the US continued to “consult with Pakistan and its neighbours to assess the challenges of the threat environment and what responses need to be made”.

He said the US would also like to see a reduction in tensions between Pakistan and India because “it’s in the interest of everyone in the region and certainly everyone in the world”.

“So as much as there can be dialogue there, as much as there can be a reduction in tensions, we would encourage that,” he said.

Asked to comment on Pakistan’s claim that it had removed the Haqqani network from its territory, Mr Toner said that during her visit to Islamabad Ms Rice had “very frank and productive conversations” with her counterparts about the continuing threat and violence in the region and about the best ways to counteract it.

“In terms of the Haqqani network and really the violence that we see from the Taliban and the Haqqani network, we really want to double down on trying to stop these groups from carrying out other acts of terror,” he said.

“We recognise that there’s still a threat from these terrorist groups emanating from Pakistan. We want to see Pakistan take additional steps to address some of these threats,” the US official said.

Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2015

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