By APP,
Washington : In a marked departure from his earlier campaign rhetoric, US presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama on Sunday saw the need for recognizing Pakistan’s interests for forging a better anti-terror cooperation between the two countries.
The Democratic senator, who is locked in a close presidential nomination race with Hillary Clinton, acknowledged that the inception of a new democratic government provides an opportunity for the United States to start a wide-ranging relationship with the key South Asian country.
“We now have a new government in Pakistan. We have an opportunity to initiate a new relationship. We’ve got to send a signal to them that we are interested in national security, but we also recognize they’re interested in figuring out how do they feed their people and how do they prosper economically?
“And instead of just focusing on our issues, we’ve got to focus on some of theirs, so that we can get better cooperation to hunt down al-Qaeda and make sure that does not become a safe haven for them,” he stated in his Meet the Press appearance on NBC channel. Obama’s remarks indicated a marked toning down of his earlier statements when he came under criticism for suggesting unilateral actions against any terrorists that may be hiding on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border.
On Afghanistan, he emphasized a more focused attention through more US troops and better reconstruction job. “I think we need more troops there, I think we need to do a better job of reconstruction there. I think we have to be focused on Afghanistan. It is one of the reasons that I was opposed to the war in Iraq in the first place.”
Continuing, Obama added, “ We now know that al-Qaeda is stronger than any time since 2001. We’ve just received additional intelligence reports from our agencies, showing that they are growing in capability. That is something that we’ve got to address.”