NEW DELHI, Feb 16: India, Pakistan and the United States face a common threat from resurgent Taliban groups, a fear underscored by the sweeping gains the militants have made in the Swat valley, a top US diplomat said here on Monday.
Speaking to reporters after his meetings with Indian officials, including Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Mr Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said he gave them an account of his discussions with interlocutors in Islamabad and Kabul.
He said he keenly listened to India’s perspective on the two countries covered by his mandate. However, a feature of the New Delhi visit was the absence of an official word from India about the discussions that were thought to have covered a range of issues from the Mumbai terror attacks to threats from the Taliban.
Public silence on a key visit that otherwise promised to take India’s concerns with terrorism straight to the heart of matter could reflect differences on the approach to Pakistan. Bracketing Pakistan as a victim of Taliban with India and the United States was not exactly the way India was looking at the problem till the other day.
In fact, Mr Mukherjee had last week berated Islamabad for its “misplaced sense of victimhood”.
CIA’s crucial role
A report in the Washington Post suggested that potential differences notwithstanding, the United States was already playing a key role in navigating the current India-Pakistan standoff through the back channels.
The Post said that America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had played a crucial role in India and Pakistan sharing secret intelligence information on the Mumbai attacks.
In a front-page article, the paper said the CIA “orchestrated back-channel intelligence exchanges” between India and Pakistan with the top American intelligence agency itself playing the role of a neutral arbitrator.
“The exchanges, which began days after the deadly assault in late November, gradually helped the two sides overcome mutual suspicions and paved the way for Islamabad’s announcement last week acknowledging that some of the planning for the attack had occurred on Pakistani soil,” The Post quoted sources as saying. Whether the back-channel help was discussed on Monday, was not known.
“For the first time in 60 years, your country, Pakistan and the US all face an enemy that poses direct threats to our leaderships, our capitals and our people,” Mr Holbrooke said after his talks at the Indian foreign ministry.
“I do want to underscore the fact that what happened in Swat demonstrates a key point and that is that India, United States and Pakistan all have a common threat now,” he said.
Speaking about his visit to Pakistan last week, Mr Holbrooke said: “When I was in the tribal areas and, I did not go to Swat but I was in Peshawar. I talked to people from Swat... They were frankly quite terrified.”
He added that Swat has “really, deeply affected the people of Pakistan not just in Peshawar, but in Lahore and in Islamabad”.
Asked to comment on the 10-day ceasefire announced by the Taliban in Swat to facilitate the implementation of Shariah laws there, Mr Holbrooke said he did not have much information about it and would be talking to the US Ambassador in Islamabad regarding this. He said he had ‘reported’ to the Indian government on his trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan and exchanged views.