By NNN-APP,
Washington : The United States should fully stand with the democratic Pakistani leadership and make resolute efforts to settle disputes on its borders with India and Afghanistan as part of a regional approach to ensuring peace and security, top American experts has said.
“The U.S. needs to stand clearly with this newly elected democratic leadership. We should avoid shortcuts – we need to build confidence in Pakistan’s democratically elected leadership,” Bruce Riedel told conference at Brookings Institution.
Commenting on the latest political developments in Pakistan, Riedel said the major coalition political parties are debating the question of impeaching President Musharraf.
“Our options are very limited by the residue of our past policies,” he added.
In this context, he supported the Biden-Lugar legislation on tripling economic assistance for development of Pakistani people.
On the security issues, Riedel advocated the need for an ‘overall regional approach’ to problems of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan, he said, is in an unusual situation in terms of its borders with its two neighbors – the Durrand Line with Afghanistan and with India in the disputed Kashmir territory.
“Energetic, quiet and resolute American diplomacy ought to be put to work to try to resolve both of those anomalies.”
“If you want Pakistan to provide a secure border, you first of all have to have a border that everyone has agreed to,” he added.
The seasoned expert rejected suggestions of foreign troops on the Pakistani soil. “We need to avoid loose talk about larger military options, the notion of moving NATO forces into the FATA is crazy”. “The notion for us to secure Pakistan’s nuclear arms is even more crazy.”
He opined that the United States could chase only “very high value (al-Qaeda) targets” but Washington “needed to be extraordinary careful to make sure that these are high value targets.”
The US, he said, should “work energetically to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan.”
In response to a question, he remarked, “India has been quite active in Afghanistan, it has been one of the major donors of economic assistance to the Karzai government given its own economic serious poverty problems at home it is remarkable actually that India has been willing to put in to helping to try to rebuild Afghanistan. It has also been politically very active in Afghanistan, it is no secret that President Karzai’s sympathies are much more with India.”
He said the Pakistan-Afghanistan situation is “very interdependent.” “You can make a very strong case that much of Pakistan’s problems originate in Afghanistan. The Talibanization is really a phenomenon that was born out of the Afghan civil wars in the 1990s.”