NEW YORK, Feb 8: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has called upon the United States to develop a new strategy wherein there is “more intelligence sharing between the two countries”. “So when actionable and credible information is shared with us, we would be allowed to hit [targets] ourselves instead of the Americans.”

In an interview with Newsweek published on Sunday, Mr Gilani appealed to the world and to the Americans that they should “strengthen the capacity of our law-enforcement agencies”.

“We have the will and we have the ability. We don’t have the capacity. The capacity I am talking about is the law-enforcement agencies like the Frontier Corps or the police because the army is not a permanent solution for anything.”

Asked what did he need from America, Mr Gilani said: “From the US, I can say that the Biden-Lugar bill should be expedited. It provides funds for development assistance to troubled areas of the world.”

Expounding on the country’s relations with India, he said all confidence-building measures with India became ‘futile’ following the Mumbai attacks. “We were having excellent relations with India. We were on good terms with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh” until the November 26 attacks.

“...With this incident all of our confidence-building measures became futile. Now, you can imagine who is the beneficiary of this – the terrorists,” Mr Gilani said.

“Therefore ...and I assure India and I assure the world that whatever information has been given to us, we will probe into it and whoever was involved we will try according to our laws, and we will not allow our territory to be used for terrorism,” he said.

Unlike the Musharraf regime, he said, the present democratic government had the ability to control militant groups like Lakshar-e-Taiba and Jamaatd Dawa.

“We have already arrested the main leaders of Jamaatd Dawa and Lashkar-e-Taiba. We have frozen their accounts and put them in jail and are investigating their affairs,” Mr Gilani said.