By IANS,
Washington : The United States says it has stepped up anti-terror cooperation with India, Pakistan and Afghanistan as Pakistan based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), blamed for 26/11 Mumbai attacks, posed a threat to all four nations.
“It’s a threat to our citizens, it’s a threat to Indian citizens, and next door it’s a threat to Pakistani citizens, and next door it’s a threat to Afghan citizens,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters Thursday.
“I think this is (why) – we have stepped up our cooperation with all of these countries,” he said when asked how serious a threat LeT, which had mounted all the major terrorist attacks in India in the last 10 years, poses to US national security interest.
“Together we are trying to reduce the threat of violent extremism that threatens all of us and our respective citizens, Crowley said. “It is a work in progress. Tragically, we see examples of this every week.”
“But it is a priority. For each of these countries, counter-terrorism is a central pillar of our ongoing strategic dialogue and something that we will continue to work collectively to see if we can’t reduce the threat to our citizens,” he said.
Asked about the threats against US and Western interests in India that led the US to issue a travel warning to Americans, Crowley said: “It is part of a broader ongoing concern we have about terrorism in the region and it underscores the importance of our ongoing cooperation with India and other countries in the region to address a challenge that we all share.”
The travel warning “was based on some further intelligence, very specific intelligence regarding a particular threat to markets, and so we issued the Warden Message and caution to our American community,” he said.