By IANS
Washington : Stating that Pakistan is having problems dealing with an unprecedented internal threat to its security, US defence officials have said they were trying to understand the ground realities before the US takes any action in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
“For Al Qaeda and some of the other insurgent groups along that border, which has not been fully under Islamabad’s control, to turn against the Pakistani government and take on the government is a new development,” Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates said here at a press conference.
“I think that the Pakistani government, frankly, is dealing with the emergence of a threat inside Pakistan that it has not confronted until very recently. And it’s not a surprise to me that they’re having some challenges in trying to deal with that,” Gates commented.
Gates was accompanied at the press conference by vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James E. Cartwright, who said the US would stand by and be available if Pakistan needed help.
“We’re assessing what value we could have, or any other ally could have, in contributing to their security, but they’re a sovereign nation. They have to make those decisions,” Cartwright said in the wake of developments like the Taliban overrunning a key fort in Waziristan province and killing many Pakistani troops.
“And we will stand by and be available, particularly for those things that we might do in the way of training or in helping them in shortfalls that they have as they start to transition their force to dealing with internal insurgency,” Cartwright said.
Both Cartwright and Gates, however, declined to respond to pointed questions whether Pakistan has sought US help.