US tones down tirade against Pakistan

[Adios Amigo]

By Anwar Iqbal
Friday, 07 May, 2010


WASHINGTON: Three key pillars of the US administration — the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department — joined hands on Thursday in an effort to tone down anti-Pakistan tirade stirred by the arrest of a Pakistani-American in the Times Square bombing attempt earlier this week.

The most forceful attempt to deflect anti-Pakistan rhetoric came from the State Department, where Assistant Secretary of State Philip Crowley said he would not allow the department’s platform to be used to suggest that all terrorist activities in the world originated in that country.

“I’m not going to entertain a question that implicates one country, and to suggest that all terrorism in the world is the responsibility of one country. That’s not true,” said Mr Crowley.

The State Department also said that US Ambassador Anne Patterson had spoken on Thursday with Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmoud Qureshi and other senior officials in Islamabad.

She held similar meetings with President Asif Ali Zardari and Mr Qureshi on Wednesday.

The meetings took place against the backdrop of the countries’ determination to “continue to work together, to investigate the attempted bombing in Times Square,” Mr Crowley said.

The White House said that alleged failed bomber Faisal Shahzad’s links to North Waziristan were not discussed at President Barack Obama’s war council meeting on Thursday, which focussed on the situation in Afghanistan.

The White House also said that it was not supporting a move in the US Congress to strip the citizenship of a terror suspect because it believed this was not an effective way of dealing with this problem.

The Pentagon recalled that the Pakistanis too had “lost thousands and thousands of their military men and women as well as their civilians due to terrorist attacks”.

Drone attacks

But unidentified officials told journalists in Washington that the Obama administration had quietly allowed the Central Intelligence Agency to expand drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal regions as US investigators probe links between Faisal Shahzad and Fata-based terrorists.

Under-secretary of Defence for Policy Michele Flournoy did not comment on news reports about expanding the drone attacks but acknowledged that the United States had concerns about the presence of terrorist groups in Fata.

“Afghanistan-Pakistan, that border region, has been the sort of locus of the sort of heartland, if you will, of Al Qaeda for many years,” she told the House Armed Services Committee.

“And so I think denying them sanctuary and safe haven there, disrupting them there has a powerful impact on the global network.”

But she also pointed out that the United States was trying to ensure that “the Afghans and the Pakistanis have their own capability to do that denial in the future”.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told a briefing in Washington that the incident in Times Square “clearly points to the need for us all to continue our aggressive operations in going after terrorists wherever they reside”.

Although he refused to discuss the drone attacks, Mr Morrell hoped that the Times Square incident would “reinvigorates us to confront these threats wherever they are.”

Other US officials, who were not identified, told journalists that the administration approved “a dramatic expansion” of its campaign of drone strikes in Fata.

The expanded authority permits the CIA to rely on “pattern of life” analysis, using evidence collected by surveillance cameras on the unmanned aircraft and from other sources about individuals and locations.

The information then is used to target suspected militants, even when their full identities are not known. Previously, the CIA was restricted in most cases to killing only individuals whose names were on an approved list.

Foreign Minister Qureshi warned on Wednesday that the Times Square incident was probably the Taliban’s reaction to recent US drone attacks.

Meanwhile, President Obama convened his war council, in the wake of the failed New York City bomb attack.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said while the bombing attempt was also discussed, the meeting focussed on the security situation in Afghanistan and on President Hamid Karzai’s visit to Washington next week.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defence Secretary Robert Gates, National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones, CIA Director Leon Panetta, and other diplomatic, security and military officials, attended the meeting.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and Nato forces, briefed the war council through a video-conference, telling Mr Obama and his top advisers that he was observing “a steady progress in Afghanistan”.

DAWN.COM | Front Page | US tones down tirade against Pakistan

 

[Adios Amigo]

Pakistan committed to fighting extremists: Gates

Saturday, 08 May, 2010



KANSAS CITY: Defense Secretary Robert Gates is praising the Pakistani army's commitment to fighting extremists inside its borders.

Gates says the US remains willing to offer as much help as the Pakistani government will accept. He has not indicated a new push for more US forces in Pakistan following the attempted bombing in Times Square.

Officials are trying to establish whether Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American suspected in the incident, had connections to foreign terrorist groups that either funded or helped in the botched bombing.

Gates says the Pakistanis are ''in the driver's seat'' in trying to root out extremist forces, adding they have their ''foot on the accelerator.''

Gates is to appear at the Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, later Friday.— AP

DAWN.COM | Pakistan | Pakistan committed to fighting extremists: Gates

 

[Adios Amigo]

By Anwar Iqbal
Saturday, 08 May, 2010


WASHINGTON: A senior US military commander and a lawmaker said on Friday they believed the man who tried to bomb New York’s Times Square was a ‘lone wolf’.

Gen David Petraeus, who oversees America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, told a US news agency there was no indication that Faisal Shahzad worked with others in concocting the terror attack or the homemade bomb.

“We don’t know that this individual did something that escaped in some way our ability to pick up on either his trip to Pakistan or some other case,” said Congressman Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, when asked at a news conference why US intelligence agencies failed to learn about Faisal’s links to the Taliban.

Gen Petraeus, however, told AP that Faisal was “inspired by militants in Pakistan but didn’t have direct contact with them”.

On Thursday, the Washington Post reported that US investigators were “increasingly convinced that (Faisal’s) accounts to interrogators, in particular his assertion that he was trained by the Pakistani Taliban, are on the mark”.

The report, quoting anonymous intelligence sources, also claimed that US officials had identified an “overseas courier” who funnelled money to Shahzad for the failed terrorist attack.

The Obama’s administration believed that drone attacks were not adequate in thwarting militant attempts on the West. And it was considering an “expanded training mission” by US Special Forces to establish enough “confidence” in the Pakistani military to launch offensives against militant strongholds in North Waziristan, a press report said.

The US administration did not share the media’s enthusiasm, particularly when it came to browbeating Pakistan.

“We have dramatically increased our partnership with Pakistan – intense security cooperation, supporting Pakistan’s largest offensive against terrorism within borders – within its borders in years, an offensive that is focused not just on Al Qaeda, but on the Pakistani Taliban as well,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Mr Gibbs also downplayed the suggestion that Faisal had received training at a camp in North Waziristan.

“The specific region was not, as I recall, brought up in great detail today,” said the White House spokesman when asked if President Barack Obama had discussed the terror camps in North Waziristan with his war council on Thursday.

“Suffice to say that many regions in Pakistan have been the focus of our cooperative work with Pakistan, the government of Pakistan for the length of our administration, understanding that we have a threat that continues from that region of the world.”

DAWN.COM | Front Page | Shahzad a ?lone wolf?: Petraeus