Pakistan continues to consider India existential threat: US

Pakistan continues to consider India an existential threat despite the two countries taking significant appreciative steps in improving their ties, a top American intelligence official said on Wednesday. “Pakistan and our interests are not always congruent… Their existential threat continues to be India,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing.
Clapper said after a four-year pause, India and Pakistan revived expert-level discussions on conventional and nuclear confidence-building measures (CBM). Indian and Pakistani prime ministers had cordial meetings during the April international cricket championships and the November South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meeting, he said.
However, despite these appreciative steps in improving ties, India is expected to adopt a go slow policy in its talks with Pakistan on the issue of Siachen Glacier and Sir Creek, Clapper said. “Less progress has been made in discussions over the difficult border issues of Siachen Glacier and Sir Creek, and we judge New Delhi will maintain a go-slow approach in these negotiations,” he said.
“Progress expanding trade ties has also helped improve relations, and Islamabad in November publicly committed to a proposal for granting most favored nation trade status to India,” he said. The American intelligence official also said India was unlikely to send troops or heavy equipment to Afghanistan, fearing a backlash from Pakistan. “New Delhi in the near term is unlikely to send troops or heavy equipment to Kabul because it does not want to provoke Pakistan,” Clapper said.

ISI assisting Haqqani Network

A top Republican Senator has said that the US should base its relationship with Pakistan with the full knowledge that the ISI, Pakistan’s military spy agency, continued to help the Haqqani Network that attacks American troops in Afghanistan. “There is enormous political turmoil in Pakistan, and we have to base our relations on them with the full and certain knowledge that the ISI is assisting the Haqqani Network, who are killing young Americans,” Senator John McCain told the CNN in an interview. “We have to approach our relationship from a much more practical side,” McCain, the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, said in response to a question. McCain’s remarks come a day after President Barack Obama confirmed that American drones regularly targeted terrorists in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan.