Secretary of State John Kerry phoned President Asif Zardari as the new top US diplomat sought Pakistan’s support on stability in Afghanistan and underscored his commitment to a mutually beneficial US-Pakistan relationship.
“Secretary Kerry has a longstanding relationship with many Pakistani leaders, and he used the opportunity of the phone call to underscore the continuing importance of an effective, strong, and mutually beneficial U.S.-Pakistani relationship,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
In his call, Kerry emphasised that Pakistan and the United States have “many shared interests, including fighting terrorism and extremism, supporting democratic civilian institutions, and supporting Pakistan’s efforts to increase economic growth, and obviously the – our shared interest in regional stability, including a secure and peaceful future for Afghanistan”.
“And he noted our ongoing interest in finding a concrete way to act jointly in support of all of these goals, and he made clear that he looks forward to working with President Zardari going forward,” Nuland told reporters at the daily briefing.
On Afghanistan’s reconciliation process, and the new secretary of state’s expectations from Pakistan, the spokeswoman said, “We have been in a good place in recent months – Afghanistan, Pakistan, U.S. – in terms of using the core group that we established to support Afghanistan reconciliation to work through some of the practical issues like safe passage for Taliban who are willing to consider reconciliation, those kinds of things.”
“As you can see from some of the moves that have been going on between Afghanistan and Pakistan, they are also having a better dialogue now about facilitating reconciliation. So we would hope that that trend could continue,” she added.
