WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that the United States had notified Pakistan’s prime minister and army chief of the strike that targeted Taliban leader Mullah Mansour.

According to a transcript of a news briefing held in Myanmar, Secretary Kerry told reporters that the US had had “longstanding conversations” with Pakistan and Afghanistan about its “objective” of targeting Mullah Mansour, and both countries’ leaders were notified of the airstrike.

“I know that Gen Nicholson talked directly to Gen Raheel Sharif and I talked directly to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,” Secretary Kerry said. Gen John Nicholson is the head of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan and had supervised the strike. He met Chief of Army Staff Gen Raheel Sharif at the GHQ in Rawalpindi on May 10.

Like their Afghan counterparts, US officials, who spoke to various media outlets, are also saying that Mullah Mansour was killed in Balochistan while returning from Iran on a fake passport. The official US statement on Saturday, however, identified the site only as a remote area along the Pak-Afghan border.

“I’m not going to get into further details about the timing...,” said Secretary Kerry when asked for details of the US strike.

 “This is a decision that was made by the President of the United States … and it was done appropriately and in conversation with both parties.”

Secretary Kerry hoped that Mullah Mansour’s elimination would encourage the Taliban to participate in reconciliation talks with the Afghan government, as he was neither encouraging people to talk nor supporting the reconciliation process.

“So hopefully this is a message to people that if nobody wants to talk about peace, we’re prepared to continue to do what we need to do to protect our country and to protect the journey of Afghans towards their full sovereignty and independence as a democratic country,” he said,

“The president of Afghanistan has made it clear that he’s prepared to have talks. We are prepared to have talks. But if people want to stand in the way of peace, continue to threaten and kill and blow people up, we have no recourse but to respond, and I think we responded appropriately,” said Secretary Kerry while explaining the US position on this issue.

“This action sends a clear message to the world that we will continue to stand with our Afghan partners as they work to build a more stable, united, secure, and prosperous Afghanistan,” he added.

Separately, a senior US official also answered some of the questions related to the strike.

Asked if Mullah Mansour’s discovery in Pakistan showed that the country was still harbouring terrorists, the official said: “Pakistani leaders have assured us they are making efforts to deal with terrorist groups of all kinds.”

The United States had welcomed Pakistan’s commitment, as part of its National Action Plan, not to discriminate among terrorist groups, he added.

“We have expressed our deep concern about remaining terrorist sanctuaries inside Pakistan’s borders that afford extremists the ability to undermine Afghanistan’s stability and target US and coalition forces in Afghanistan,” the official said.

Asked if the US was now proactively targeting members of the Taliban, the official noted that Mullah Mansour was actively involved with planning attacks against facilities in Kabul and across Afghanistan, and presented a threat to Afghan civilians and security forces, “our personnel and coalition partners”.

“The opportunity to conduct this operation to eliminate the threat that Mansour posed was a distinctive one, and we acted on it,” he said.

The US official said that President Obama authorised the strike because Mullah Mansour was waging a deadly campaign of attacks against Afghan and coalition forces and had been actively planning high-profile attacks in Kabul and across Afghanistan.

“We will continue to take all necessary actions to keep our personnel safe in Afghanistan and to promote stability there, even as we simultaneously work to set the conditions for a peace process between the Afghan government and the Taliban,” the official added.

He noted that under Mullah Mansour, the Taliban publicly and privately rebuffed efforts to advance peace talks through the Quadrilateral Coordination Group.

Asked how would this attack impact the reconciliation process, the US official said the “only real way for the Taliban to achieve its political aims and to contribute to the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan is to join a meaningful reconciliation process that leads to peace and stability”.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2016