US Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter said on Wednesday that the Pakistan government was well abreast of the fact that both Washington and Islamabad were equal stakeholders in the war on terror, but this cooperation could get affected when Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt General Ahmad Shuja Pasha finished his tenure. Speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Munter said cooperation between the secret agencies of Pakistan and his country were still sustained. He said Pakistani politicians did not want the US soldiers to go back home, adding that the US had put on hold military aid to Pakistan based on the withdrawal of American trainers, and the ties between the militaries of the two countries were not good. The US envoy advised his country’s leadership to employ a policy of minimum interference and maximum decency towards Pakistan’s affairs, adding that the US should refrain from the use of threats. He said the leadership in Islamabad and Rawalpindi wanted better ties with Washington but also believed that it should be based on mutual respect. He said Pakistan was like a ship that did not move forward or backward in the sea, but it also was not sinking. US-Pakistan ties, he said, were harmed by the Raymond Davis issue and Pakistan also took the US covert operation to kill Osama bin Laden as affront to its sovereignty, along with the NATO attack on the border checkpost on November 26 last year that left 24 Pakistani soldiers dead.
A realistic and commendable approach….
It is important that both countries should also engage in rehabilitating the people who have rejected violence.
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