WASHINGTON, July 1: The US State Department has not only welcomed the action against extremists near Peshawar as a “positive development” but also has publicly expressed a rare appreciation of Pakistan’s refusal to allow US troops to operate in Fata.
“I don’t know — how many governments do you know are interested in having foreign militaries do operations on their soil?” said the department’s deputy spokesman Tom Casey when reminded at a briefing that the new Pakistani government does not seem keen on having US soldiers on its soil and if Washington would like to see that changed.
“Look, we have a cooperative military relationship with Pakistan. We give a large amount of assistance to Pakistani forces as well as to those forces in the tribal area, the so-called Frontier Corps, to be able to help them fight these battles themselves,” he said. ‘Ultimately, it’s in our interest that they are able to manage security fully and completely inside their country.”
Mr Casey noted that the new Pakistani government is already conducting a military operation in the Khyber Agency and Washington would like it to take similar actions in other areas as well.
“We’ve seen the government of Pakistan, just over this past weekend, take some military actions against extremists in the area around Peshawar,” the official said.
“We think that’s a positive development and certainly hope and expect that this government will continue to do so”.
Mr Casey also assured Islamabad that the United States wanted to strengthen democratic institutions in Pakistan and would like to see the new government work with Washington to confront the challenges posed by extremism.
“And that includes not just on the political and economic front but also on the military front,” he said.
“We want to help strengthen democratic institutions in Pakistan. We want to help strengthen Pakistan’s economy and provide development and education opportunities for people in Pakistan itself, as well as in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas,” he added.
Mr Casey denied US media reports that US operations against Al Qaeda have been stymied by bureaucratic wrangling. The United States, he said, was doing all it could to deal with the threat posed by terrorist leaders like Osama bin Laden and will continue to cooperate with Pakistan and Afghanistan to achieve this target.
The State Department official, however, warned that there were “no silver bullets, no magic solutions” for defeating terrorism.
“Sometimes, I think people oversimplify this problem by assuming that there is simply one way of dealing with it. There isn’t. That’s just the reality,” he said.
