By Dipankar De Sarkar, IANS,
London : British Prime Minister Gordon Brown Sunday attacked the Pakistani leadership in exasperated tones, demanding that it “take out” Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Zawahiri.
“The Pakistan government has started to take on the Taliban and to take on Al Qaeda in South Waziristan, but we have got to ask ourselves why, eight years after September 11, nobody has been able to spot or detain or get close to Osama bin Laden, nobody has been able to get close to Zawahiri, the number two of Al Qaeda,” Brown told BBC television.
“We have got to ask the Pakistani security forces, army and politicians to join us in the major effort that the world is committing resources to, not only to isolate Al-Qaeda but to break them in Pakistan,” Brown said after a telephone conversation with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari Saturday.
“…If we are putting our strategy into place for dealing with building up Afghan forces in Afghanistan so they can control things themselves, then Pakistan has got to be able to show that it can take on Al Qaeda, which is a threat to Pakistan and the Pakistani people as well as to the rest of the world.”
“I believe that after eight years, we should have been able to do more, with all the Pakistani forces working together with the rest of the world, to get to the bottom of where Al Qaeda is operating from.”
He added: “We want, after eight years, to see more progress in taking out these two people at the top of Al Qaeda.”
Brown’s comments came ahead of an expected announcement this week of 500 more troops that would take up the British military presence in Afghanistan to 9,500.
The British presence in Afghanistan has come under growing criticism from domestic politicians, former generals and families of British soldiers as more than 200 British troops have been killed in that country since 2001.