WASHINGTON – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday warned against abandoning Pakistan, urging Capitol Hill to back the (administration’s) request for the assistance for key allies including Islamabad.
“We are trying to deepen our relationship. There are many challenges confronting us, but we know what happens when we walk away from Pakistan. We did it before, and the results, unfortunately, were quite dire for us,” she told lawmakers in a testimony before a House Appropriations Committee.
She said the US “continues to demonstrate its commitment to an enduring strategic partnership [with Pakistan] focused on economic, military and police assistance to help root out extremists and support other critical investments.”
Clinton noted that the US standing in Pakistan was difficult. “When I became secretary of state, I realised that our public standing was the lowest in Pakistan of any country in the world. And there are many reasons for that.”
“But one of the problems was we were not really trying to respond to a lot of the criticism and a lot of the accusations. So when the question came, I think from this side, about the increase in personnel, I mean, we’re beefing up our public diplomacy. We have a great story to tell about America, and we’re going to keep telling it. And we are telling it under very difficult circumstances.”
Meanwhile, acknowledging the sacrifices rendered Pakistan in the fight against terrorism Admiral Mike Mullen, top US military officer, said reestablishing a relationship of trust with Pakistan was critical. “Trust is critical not only between the US and Pakistani militaries and intelligence agencies but also between the citizens of the two nations,” Mullen said.
“I have traveled to Pakistan over 20 times to work on establishing a relationship of trust with the Pakistani military,” Mullen said, according to Pentagon. “We left them for 12 years – from the early 1990s to about 2002 – and we are working on re-establishing that trust,” he said in response to a question about the key regional country’s cooperation in combating the terrorist threat.
In his comments, Mullen said he was always mindful of the thousands of service members that the Pakistani military had lost and the tens of thousands who had been wounded. “They have sacrificed greatly to support their own citizens in Pakistan and they will continue to do that,” he said. He also noted a much improved anti-terrorism cooperation between the two countries.
