Rice’s South Asia trip nets pledges, little else
Güncelleme Tarihi:
The Associated Press
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Aralık 06, 2008 00:00
ISLAMABAD - US Secretary of State Condolleezza Rice completes her South Asia visit, aiming to ease the row over Mumbai, and Pakistan tells her what she wants to hear.
But her visit ends with no specific success since it is not clear whether pledges over terrorism will materialize in the upcoming days.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came looking for a public pledge from Pakistan to go after terrorists using the country as a hide-out, and an unsteady U.S.-backed government told her what she wanted to hear.
It's not clear that those leaders can deliver - or even that the United States has much say in how hard they try.
"I found a Pakistani government that is focused on the threat and that understands its responsibilities to respond to terrorism and extremism wherever it is found," Rice said following sessions Thursday with the country's powerful army chief and civilian leaders. Pakistan's leaders know what's at stake after last week's terror attack in next-door India and have acknowledged their duty to evict terrorists and prevent new attacks, Rice said at the close of a trip to South Asia this week.
In India, Rice delivered U.S. condolences for the more than 170 dead. In Pakistan, she offered a cautionary vision of what terror groups can do. They may attack your old rival today, Rice argued, but tomorrow it could be you.
Broader intelligence sharing
The attacks on a string of commercial, tourist and religious sites across India's cosmopolitan financial capital showed a breadth of planning, manpower and money that suggests terrorists are learning from al-Qaeda if not directly expanding its franchise. As Rice said several times this week, the targeting of Americans and other Westerners also made the Mumbai attack "qualitatively different" for Washington.
The U.S. wants broader sharing of intelligence and specific actions by Pakistan to dismantle terrorists that have found a comfortable haven in the country. India blamed attacks on Pakistani militants and U.S. officials privately agree. Islamabad is not implicated, but Rice suggested that was cold comfort. Any nation is at fault, she said, when it allows terrorists to operate from its soil.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, who has vowed full cooperation with India, told Rice the attacks provide a chance to strengthen efforts against terrorism. As successor to President Pervez Musharraf, whose ties to the Bush administration may have cost him his job, Zardari is squeezed between outside expectations and internal politics. His control over Pakistan's historically powerful army and intelligence services is untested.
US raids in Pakistan
U.S. officials say the intelligence operation has a history of sponsoring militancy and violence, particularly against India, as a means of strengthening its own power. The U.S. was hopeful that Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani would be a tough anti-terror partner and shake up the entrenched intelligence network.
But the general was his country's strongest critic of U.S. terrorist-hunting raids into Pakistan from Afghanistan this fall. After a U.S. ground raid in September, Kayani said that Pakistan would defend its sovereignty and that there was no deal to allow foreigners to operate inside its borders.
Like much of what she undertook in nearly four years as secretary of state, Rice's two days of emergency diplomacy in South Asia ended without specific accomplishment. It was probably her last fireman's dash into the world's problems. After the national scarring of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the spread of terrorism along with dispossession, disaffection and acculturated anti-Americanism spread on Rice's watch. The urgency of that spread was behind Rice's scramble to respond to the India attacks in person. She has not visited India or Pakistan in response to other terror assaults, including the near destruction this year of the hotel where she and other Americans routinely stayed in the Pakistani capital.
"This was an attack at a level of sophistication that we haven't seen here on the subcontinent before," the top American diplomat said in Mumbai.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came looking for a public pledge from Pakistan to go after terrorists using the country as a hide-out, and an unsteady U.S.-backed government told her what she wanted to hear.
It's not clear that those leaders can deliver - or even that the United States has much say in how hard they try.
"I found a Pakistani government that is focused on the threat and that understands its responsibilities to respond to terrorism and extremism wherever it is found," Rice said following sessions Thursday with the country's powerful army chief and civilian leaders. Pakistan's leaders know what's at stake after last week's terror attack in next-door India and have acknowledged their duty to evict terrorists and prevent new attacks, Rice said at the close of a trip to South Asia this week.
In India, Rice delivered U.S. condolences for the more than 170 dead. In Pakistan, she offered a cautionary vision of what terror groups can do. They may attack your old rival today, Rice argued, but tomorrow it could be you.
Broader intelligence sharing
The attacks on a string of commercial, tourist and religious sites across India's cosmopolitan financial capital showed a breadth of planning, manpower and money that suggests terrorists are learning from al-Qaeda if not directly expanding its franchise. As Rice said several times this week, the targeting of Americans and other Westerners also made the Mumbai attack "qualitatively different" for Washington.
The U.S. wants broader sharing of intelligence and specific actions by Pakistan to dismantle terrorists that have found a comfortable haven in the country. India blamed attacks on Pakistani militants and U.S. officials privately agree. Islamabad is not implicated, but Rice suggested that was cold comfort. Any nation is at fault, she said, when it allows terrorists to operate from its soil.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, who has vowed full cooperation with India, told Rice the attacks provide a chance to strengthen efforts against terrorism. As successor to President Pervez Musharraf, whose ties to the Bush administration may have cost him his job, Zardari is squeezed between outside expectations and internal politics. His control over Pakistan's historically powerful army and intelligence services is untested.
US raids in Pakistan
U.S. officials say the intelligence operation has a history of sponsoring militancy and violence, particularly against India, as a means of strengthening its own power. The U.S. was hopeful that Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani would be a tough anti-terror partner and shake up the entrenched intelligence network.
But the general was his country's strongest critic of U.S. terrorist-hunting raids into Pakistan from Afghanistan this fall. After a U.S. ground raid in September, Kayani said that Pakistan would defend its sovereignty and that there was no deal to allow foreigners to operate inside its borders.
Like much of what she undertook in nearly four years as secretary of state, Rice's two days of emergency diplomacy in South Asia ended without specific accomplishment. It was probably her last fireman's dash into the world's problems. After the national scarring of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the spread of terrorism along with dispossession, disaffection and acculturated anti-Americanism spread on Rice's watch. The urgency of that spread was behind Rice's scramble to respond to the India attacks in person. She has not visited India or Pakistan in response to other terror assaults, including the near destruction this year of the hotel where she and other Americans routinely stayed in the Pakistani capital.
"This was an attack at a level of sophistication that we haven't seen here on the subcontinent before," the top American diplomat said in Mumbai.