WASHINGTON, March 11: The United States favours an independent judiciary in Pakistan but does not want to tell Pakistanis how to interpret their own Constitution, says the US State Department.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that there were two sides to the issue: the independence of judiciary and interpreting the Pakistani Constitution. The US, he said, “absolutely supports the demand for an independent judiciary that upholds the application of the rule of law”.

“But again, you will get within the Pakistani political system, as I have read about it in newspapers, a dispute about the interpretation of Pakistani laws and Pakistani constitution,” he observed, adding that the US did not want to take a position on this aspect.

When journalists reminded him that an independent judiciary was a pillar of US democracy and the US should support the effort to establish such a judiciary in Pakistan, Mr McCormack said: “Look, I’m not here to be a lawyer for either side … My job is to talk about what US policies are and it is our view that these are issues that need to be handled solely by the Pakistanis. We don’t have a vote in this nor should we.”

The US, he said, was prepared to work with the new Pakistani government as it goes forward on issues of mutual concern.

“And certainly, we are going to continue to pursue our national interests with respect to Pakistan and it’s no secret that those involve, in large part, working on fighting the war on terror.”

The US, however, believed in having a “stable, prosperous, and more democratic Pakistan furthers US interests in the region”.

The spokesman also noted that the parties that won the Feb 18 elections were now engaged in a political initiative and were discussing a platform for forming the next government.

“What’s in the platform and who’s in the government and what sort of power-sharing arrangements there are within the Pakistani political system, entirely up to the Pakistanis within the confines of their laws and their constitution,” he added.