By NNN-KUNA,
Washington : US Secretary of State Hillar Clinton affirmed Friday that her country is looking for a “long-term” partnership with the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Speaking to CNN, Clinton said that one of the problems that both those countries share is “its very porous border where terrorists go back and forth”.
She added that they seek “safe haven wherever they can find it on either side of the border”.
“By emphasizing in our approach now that we’re going to put in enough troops so that we can reverse the momentum, we will be working closely with Pakistan as they try to combat the terrorists who threaten them,” Clinton stressed.
The US top diplomat affirmed that they cannot let Afghanistan become “a failed state,” as then Pakistan would be even under “greater pressure than it is today from insurgents within its own borders”.
She noted that they want to work with Pakistan “to be able to root out, capture, and kill the Al Qaeda leadership and they’re allies,” saying that this “really is a regional strategy. It is integrated to be more effective than what we’ve seen before.”
According to Clinton, the developments that occurred this last year with the Pakistan military going into Swat and into South Waziristan, “is the beginning, not the end of an ongoing effort to take on those militants who no longer can be separated – into who’s for us and who’s against us”.
“The new kind of syndicate that exists with al Qaeda at its head poses a danger to Pakistan’s future,” she stressed.
She said that there are many elements to a war against terrorists, where there is, what she indicated they are doing now in Afghanistan, “a very direct confrontation”.
As for Pakistan, she added that “there is support, which the United States and others are providing to the Pakistani military and government”.
“So there’s many different tools in the tool box,” she remarked.