The United States is working cooperatively with Pakistan to counter the menace of terrorism and sees the need for more efforts towards that end, says the State Department.
The counterterrorism issue was raised at the State Department daily briefing when spokesperson Victoria Nuland was asked about US stand on curbing terrorism allegedly still emanating from Pakistani tribal areas and whether Washington had considered taking the issue to the United Nations. In response, the spokesperson drew attention to the strong U.S. bilateral cooperative efforts with Pakistan on counterterrorism, setting aside the Indian reporter’s suggestion on UN involvement on the issue.
“I think you know how hard we work in our bilateral relationship with Pakistan to maintain a strong focus and a strong effort on terrorism there and to offer our support to Pakistani efforts,” Nuland remarked. Nuland spoke as the US observed the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 terrorists attacks on the United States, after which the U.S. led invasion of Afghanistan but several al-Qaeda linked militants fled across the border into the Pakistani tribal areas. While arguing the case for cooperative efforts, the spokesperson referred to the fact that Pakistanis have also been a big victim of terror.
“Pakistanis have been victims of terrorism – some 30,000 in the last few years,” Nuland noted. “So in the context of having reopened the ground lines of communication, we are back in the business of trying to intensify our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan.”
For example, she said, some of the working groups that the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set up a year ago in October, November when she was in Pakistan, that work that got suspended, is coming back on line. “We’re going to have a couple of those groups meeting, in fact, even this week,” she added. “So we will continue to make the case, we will continue to offer our support, because we agree with you there is more work to do to counter terrorism inside Pakistan.”
