What's new

US Apologizes to Pakistan For Salala Attack

apology is meaningless if Americans dont stop TTP from using Afghanistan.
while their entire efforts are on Drone strikes but the Taliban freely roam in Kunar, Pakatia & Nooristan etc.

LOL. TTP is threatening to attack NATO convoys and you still believe that TTP is an American Ally.

Why is it so hard for you to accept that there are Taliban who don't like Pakistan.
 
Hillary Clinton and Pakistan: Fighting terrorists means sometimes having to say you're sorry

The United States and Pakistan have issues. But like spouses in a volatile marriage, the two nations have found a way to stay together — for now.

That’s good news for the United States. No matter how exasperating the relationship has become, our fight against terrorists in the region make us better off together than apart.

Things went fell apart last November after two dozen Pakistani soldiers were killed in American air strikes.

Leaders of Pakistan’s civilian government demanded an official apology from President Barack Obama, in part, a reaction to domestic political opponents branding them weak. To press the demand they closed critical routes through that country used to truck supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Obama refused to apologize — also in part due to domestic political pressure, in his case from Republicans who insist he’s been too willing to apologize for U. S. actions around the world.

The relationship was already in trouble. One flash point was the deaths of two Pakistanis shot in January 2011 by a CIA contractor. Then there was the galling discovery that Osama bin Laden was hiding in plain sight in Pakistan, and the May 2011 U.S. Navy Seal raid deep inside Pakistan in which the famed terorrist was killed. It was an embarrassment to the Pakistani government, which was kept out of the loop.

So we’re unhappy with them and they’re unhappy with us. But we need access to their territory to effectively battle terrorists and they need the billions of dollars in mostly military aid we send them. Both nations needed a way to rehabilitate the relationship.

It came Monday when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called her counterpart in Pakistan and said in a carefully crafted statement, “we are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military,” and allowed that both sides made mistakes that led to the fatal air-strikes.

She never uttered the word apology, that the Pakistanis wanted to hear. But Pakistan agreed to reopen the supply routes and back off its demand for $5,000 per truck carrying supplies to Afghanistan rather than the previous $250 per truck fee. In exchange the United States agreed to reimburse Pakistan $1.2 billion for its troops’ counter-insurgency operations along the border with Afghanistan.

Being allies means sometimes having to say you’re sorry.

Hillary Clinton gives Pakistan an “apology” it accepts | Power Line

After months of negotiations, Secretary of State Clinton has issued a statement of regret that satisfies Pakistan regarding the killing by U.S. forces of two dozen Pakistani soldiers in a cross-border fire fight. As a result, Pakistan will re-open the NATO supply line to Afghanistan.

Here is the statement Clinton issued to Pakistan:

I once again reiterated our deepest regrets for the tragic incident in Salala last November. I offered our sincere condolences to the families of the Pakistani soldiers who lost their lives. Foreign Minister Khar and I acknowledged the mistakes that resulted in the loss of Pakistani military lives. We are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military. We are committed to working closely with Pakistan and Afghanistan to prevent this from ever happening again.

This stops short of being a true apology. The incident is “regretted,” not apologized for. Mistakes are acknowledged, but not described specifically or uniquely as U.S. mistakes. The U.S. is sorry for the Pakistani losses, not for our actions.

Pakistan, however, promptly trumpeted Clinton’s statement as an apology, and the U.S. issued no statement contradicting the characterization.

In short, this is a classic diplomatic resolution. We got what we wanted — the reopening of the supply line. Pakistan got what it wanted — something it could pass off as an apology. And relations between the two countries presumably have been marginally improved.

Still, I wonder whether this was the best way for the U.S. to proceed. According to Max Boot, it costs the U.S. about an extra $100 million a month to bring goods to Afghanistan through central Asia instead of through Pakistan. That’s not a small amount, but I suspect the price might be worth taking a new direction in our dealings with Pakistan, particularly since it could be accompanied by a reduction of aid to the ever-unreliable Pakistanis.

The U.S. will need to strike terrorists and insurgents in Pakistan going forward. It might have been wise to signal to the Pakistanis that we will do so without “regret” and without the constraint that comes from desiring access to their supply lines. Hillary Clinton’s finely-crafted statement will likely send a different signal.
 
@ Foxbat:

Yes, yes, we know the current situation is intolerable for some Indians who were looking forward to the 'US putting Pakistan in its place', but as Vali Nasr pointed out (in the article I posted earlier), Pakistan stood its ground, and the SoS finally prevailed over the White House and Pentagon hubris and policy of 'bullying Pakistan into submission'.

Ambassador Rehman said the words ‘regret’ and ‘condolences’ were put forward many times by the US, but that “sorry is what we had asked for”.

Asked whether the US apology was conditional and contrary to Pakistan’s earlier demands, she said the Salala tragedy was clearly mentioned as the reason for the hiatus in bilateral relations and that makes it ‘meaningful to Pakistan’.


Nato routes: No

Also:

In the CNN interview, Ambassador Rehman dispelled the impression that Pakistan had sought to charge exorbitantly on passage of each NATO container in negotiations prior to the agreement reached this week. “I don’t know where this $ 5000 (a truck) figure has come from. It’s got a life of its own after some speculation in the press,” she said. “There was never any intent to make this one of our negotiations or make price an element of our negotiations.

Sherry terms US apology, supply resumption
 
They already give billions of dollers of aid, military equipment starting from cannons to gunship helicopters, parts, subsides planes.. Why should Pakistan hagle about this peanuts money. And after all this is not about money, it about war on terror and defeating terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan that is taking lives of innocent people daily.

not hagling on the price on transit routes and remaining on the same old price was a master stroke by PPP. There is so much more Pak can get, and I dont even money, there is energy, infrastructure, arms and best of all an important say in Afghanistan.
 
US have not apologizes its just that she have said sorry as if some one was walking on the road and get tripped.


Her words:

“we are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military,” and allowed that both sides made mistakes that led to the fatal air-strikes.

These word means:

1. Its not a apology

2. she also blames pak army
 
US have not apologizes its just that she have said sorry as if some one was walking on the road and get tripped.


Her words:



These word means:

1. Its not a apology

2. she also blames pak army

its up to you how, you can think about it!
but its a sorry, & no other word can replace it, its time to move ahead, with co-opreation & trust!
 
No More Bullying Pakistan

By Vali Nasr Jul 5, 2012 4:52 PM ET

It took eight months, but the U.S. has finally apologized for killing 24 Pakistani soldiers in a firefight on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

With that, the U.S. military is again able to use routes through Pakistan to supply its forces in Afghanistan without paying exorbitant fees. Plus the threat that Pakistan will bar U.S. drone strikes is for now moot.

However, the main implication of the apology, a triumph of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over both the White House and the Pentagon, is that it ends the experiment of the U.S. trying to bully Pakistan into submission.

The clash in November between U.S. and Pakistani forces was a mess, with miscommunication on both sides but fatalities on only one. Pakistan, still seething over the U.S. breach of its sovereignty in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, closed U.S. military supply routes to Afghanistan when the U.S. initially refused to apologize. The U.S., in turn, froze $700 million in military assistance and shut down all engagement on economic and development issues. In a further deterioration of ties, the Pakistani Parliament voted to ban all U.S. drone attacks from or on Pakistani territory.

No Sympathy
The Pakistanis held firm in their insistence on an apology. Officials at the Pentagon thought the case didn’t merit one. Many had no sympathy for the Pakistanis, whom they regarded as double-dealers for stoking the insurgency in Afghanistan and providing haven to the notorious extremists of the Haqqani Network. The White House feared that an apology would invite Republican criticism. Throughout the crisis, Clinton and her senior staff argued that the U.S. should apologize. She supported re-engaging with Pakistan to protect a critical relationship while also holding Pakistan accountable for fighting the Taliban and other extremists, a point she has raised in each of her conversations with Pakistani leaders.

Clinton’s recommendations were contrary to the policy the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency put in place in early 2011. Relations had soured when the Pakistanis held CIA operative Raymond Davis after he shot two Pakistanis. Frustrated with Pakistan’s foot-dragging on counterterrorism, the two agencies successfully lobbied for a strategy to reduce high-level contacts with Pakistan, shame Pakistan in the news media, and threaten more military and intelligence operations on Pakistani soil like the bin Laden assassination. It was a policy of direct confrontation on all fronts, aimed at bending Pakistan’s will.

It failed. Pakistan stood its ground. Far from changing course, Pakistan reduced cooperation with the U.S. and began to apply its own pressure by threatening to end the drone program, one of the Obama administration’s proudest achievements.


Months of behind-the-scenes wrangling failed to resolve the apology issue. A high-level U.S. visit to Islamabad on the eve of the May 20-21 NATO Summit in Chicago proved a fiasco. Pakistan informed the Americans that after an apology, it would charge a much higher fee to let NATO supplies into Afghanistan. (That has not come to pass.) President Barack Obama refused to meet Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari at the summit unless the supply routes reopened, but that did not break the impasse.

Finally, Washington tallied the costs of confrontation with Pakistan. Supplying troops through other routes was costing an additional $100 million a month. Without Pakistani roads, the U.S. military wouldn’t be able to get its heavy equipment out of Afghanistan on time or on budget once it begins to withdraw from the country in earnest. If Pakistan remained off-limits, the U.S. would have to rethink its entire exit strategy from Afghanistan.

Open Airspace
What’s more, if Pakistan truly shut down the drone program, it would cripple the administration’s most successful terrorism- fighting tool. Pakistan might also close its airspace to U.S. planes flying between the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. Americans were understandably angry that bin Laden was found hiding in a Pakistani city, but few knew that the plane that transported his body from an Afghan base to a U.S. Navy ship for a sea burial had to fly over Pakistani territory.

The conclusion: Open conflict with Pakistan was not an option. It was time to roll back the pressure.

The apology is just a first step in repairing ties deeply bruised by the past year’s confrontations. The U.S. should adopt a long-term strategy that would balance U.S. security requirements with Pakistan’s development needs. Managing relations with Pakistan requires a deft policy -- neither the blind coddling of the George W. Bush era nor the blunt pressure of the past year, but a careful balance between pressure and positive engagement. This was Clinton’s strategy from 2009 to 2011, when U.S. security demands were paired with a strategic dialogue that Pakistan coveted. That is still the best strategy for dealing with this prickly ally.

(Vali Nasr is a Bloomberg View contributor, dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this article: Vali Nasr at vnasr@jhu.edu.

No More Bullying Pakistan - Bloomberg



nice to see agno, back on spot!


dont, you feel , that its frist time pakistan also tested USA patients over every thing!
& maybe in the future, can play again if its needed?
nato supplies will be remembered as a , tool to reverse any undesirable deceion of USA in future?;)
 
^ Agree with you....as i said in other thread, if Pakistan would have asked of stopping of drone attacks then it would have main impact. This apology has become game of words. While the other would have been seen as moral victory and true apology.
 
@ Foxbat:

Yes, yes, we know the current situation is intolerable for some Indians who were looking forward to the 'US putting Pakistan in its place', but as Vali Nasr pointed out (in the article I posted earlier), Pakistan stood its ground, and the SoS finally prevailed over the White House and Pentagon hubris and policy of 'bullying Pakistan into submission'.

I think Pakistan has not got anything out of this except a spin story around apology, carefully released on 3rd of July so that no American rejoinders come out immidiately (4th July). Seriously, what were Pakistan's demands
1. Unconditional apology (you got Clinton with a non apology and a spin fest)
2. Justice for those involved in the strike ( Like that is going to happen)
3. Increase in Transit Fee (Nothing)
4. End to drone strikes ( US drone kills nine in North Waziristan | The Nation)

Dont know what ground Pakistan stood...

Ambassador Rehman said the words ‘regret’ and ‘condolences’ were put forward many times by the US, but that “sorry is what we had asked for”.

Asked whether the US apology was conditional and contrary to Pakistan’s earlier demands, she said the Salala tragedy was clearly mentioned as the reason for the hiatus in bilateral relations and that makes it ‘meaningful to Pakistan’.
I do not expect people like you to not know the importance of accompanying words on the verb in question. After all, One can even say "I am sorry that you are so foolish".. Does not make it an unconditional apology despite the use of word Sorry... Does it?


In the CNN interview, Ambassador Rehman dispelled the impression that Pakistan had sought to charge exorbitantly on passage of each NATO container in negotiations prior to the agreement reached this week. “I don’t know where this $ 5000 (a truck) figure has come from. It’s got a life of its own after some speculation in the press,” she said. “There was never any intent to make this one of our negotiations or make price an element of our negotiations.

Thats a cop out.. Didnt Panetta make a comment about Price Gouging.. Am sure that was not based on comments from Pakistani members on defence.pk
 
its up to you how, you can think about it!
but its a sorry, & no other word can replace it, its time to move ahead, with co-opreation & trust!

sorry folks it should be ''with force , coercion , mistrust and money''
 
apology is meaningless if Americans dont stop TTP from using Afghanistan.
while their entire efforts are on Drone strikes but the Taliban freely roam in Kunar, Pakatia & Nooristan etc.

Not only TTP but BLA too.

LOL. TTP is threatening to attack NATO convoys and you still believe that TTP is an American Ally.

Why is it so hard for you to accept that there are Taliban who don't like Pakistan.

So then they shouldn't have any issues in attacking TTP leadership in Kunar. Not happened yet though. Let's see what happens in the future.
 
I think Pakistan has not got anything out of this except a spin story around apology, carefully released on 3rd of July so that no American rejoinders come out immidiately (4th July). Seriously, what were Pakistan's demands
1. Unconditional apology (you got Clinton with a non apology and a spin fest)

Blah blah..

You guys are really living in your own imagination where your version of the story is what happened.. all media outlets, save bharat's, have already mentioned that US apologized to Pakistan. The word 'apology' was what was used from day one. You can either continue to stay in denial and delusion, or come out in the real world and accept the facts.

2. Justice for those involved in the strike ( Like that is going to happen)
Don't think we ever asked that.

3. Increase in Transit Fee (Nothing)

You know nothing about negotiations, do you? How often do two sides negotiate with both expecting to have ALL their demands met?


The idea is to co-ordinate drone strikes, not stop them.. don't think you have any idea what you're talking about. And we don't know if these strikes were co-ordinated or not, because that'll always be kept a secret. Previously they weren't co-ordinated, as we know.

Dont know what ground Pakistan stood...

eb6.jpg


Really, not sure if trolling or serious. Or just choosing to be plain delusional. Not sure where you were for the 7 months when the supplies were stopped. Or that we got an apology (and yes, that's what happened - unless you choose to be delusional).

Btw, just to bring this up again..

I was talking about how you guys continue to contradict yourself, i.e. you say that Pakistan supports Taliban/Al Qaeda/Haqqanis but Pakistan is subservient to US. You REALLY don't see the problem with such an argument - the very obvious inconsistency?

Your response was that Pakistan does both and that there are multiple power centers in Pakistan.

Clearly, Pakistan CANNOT do both. By using the word 'Pakistan is doing x', you're making Pakistan a monolith, in which case you have a straightforward contradiction. Either Pakistan army is doing y or civilian government is doing z, not Pakistan is doing X..

So please tell me, who is doing what? Who is being subservient and who is supporting these groups you mention? Choose your answer very carefully, because it'll be easy to dissect almost any answer. :lol:

If you don't have an answer then quit the crap about how Pakistan is being subservient.. how does supporting these group translate into being subservient?
 
So then they shouldn't have any issues in attacking TTP leadership in Kunar. Not happened yet though. Let's see what happens in the future.

So are you acknowledging that TTP was never an American Ally but a pathetic conspiracy theory invented by Zaid Hamid to explain Pakistan's failure in controlling these Taliban beasts? :flame:
 
Back
Top Bottom