The administration of US President Barack Obama is divided over the future of its relationship with Pakistan following the killing of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
The report said the discovery of Osama in a city near Islamabad has pushed many in the administration beyond any willingness to tolerate Pakistan’s ambiguous connections with extremist groups. After years of ineffective American warnings, many US officials are concluding that a change in policy is long overdue.
“You can’t continue business as usual,” the paper quotes one of several senior administration officials as saying who discussed the sensitive issue only on the condition of anonymity. “You have to somehow convey to the Pakistanis that they have arrived at a big choice.” “People who were prepared to listen to (Pakistan’s) story for a long time are no longer prepared to listen,” the official went on to say.
But few officials are willing to consider the alternatives if Pakistan makes the wrong choice, the report said. Every available option – from limiting US aid and official contacts to unleashing more unilateral ground attacks against terrorist targets – jeopardises existing Pakistani help in the war on terror, The Post noted. Military success and an eventual negotiated settlement of the Afghanistan war are seen as virtually impossible without some level of Pakistani assistance, the paper pointed out.
The warnings are detailed in a series of contemporaneous written accounts, obtained by the Post, chronicling three years of often-contentious meetings involving top officials of both countries. Confirmed by US and Pakistani participants, the exchanges portray a circular debate in which the US repeatedly said it had irrefutable proof of ties between Pakistani military and intelligence officials and the Afghan Taliban and other insurgents, and warned that Pakistan’s refusal to act against them would exact a cost.
The Washington Post says the administration is in limbo, awaiting Pakistan’s response to immediate questions about bin Laden and hoping it will engage in a more solid counterterrorism partnership in the future. But the outcome seems increasingly in doubt as Pakistani officials’ pledges that they would never let their territory be used for terrorist strikes against another country have turned to heated accusations of betrayal after Abbottabad by the US.
It further says top national security officials have held several meetings on Pakistan in the White House Situation Room, and more are scheduled this week. No decision has been made on whether Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will make a previously scheduled trip to Pakistan later this month.
