WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has said that it has common cause with Pakistan on the war against terror, hoping that Washington and Islamabad would continue to work together in combating this menace.
“We believe that the Pakistani government shares our view that terrorists threaten both Pakistan and the United States,” Pentagon press secretary George Little told reporters at a news briefing on Tuesday.
“Scores of Pakistanis have regrettably been killed by terrorists inside Pakistan. We, of course, have suffered losses as well, inside Pakistan and elsewhere, from Al-Qaeda and from other terrorist groups operating along the Afghan-Pakistan border,” he said, adding “So we have common cause with the Pakistanis. We’re working closely with the Pakistanis on the counterterrorism issue, and we will continue to do so.”
He said there was no impact on US-Pakistan relations over the information contained in the new book ‘No Easy Day’, authored by a Navy Seal, who participated in the raid in which al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was killed in his Abbottabad hideout in May last year.
Little noted the bilateral ties between the two countries have improved and moved to a new phase since then.
“I think that we’re in a new place with US-Pak relations. We are on better footing these days, so I don’t see any effect this one book has on US-Pak relations. We certainly hope it doesn’t have that effect,” he said.
Meanwhile, praying for the recovery of both American and Pakistani victims of the recent attack on US Consulate vehicle in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, a State Department spokesperson deplored this cowardly act of suicide bombing and terrorism took the lives of Pakistanis and indeed injured two of US personnel.
“The FBI is taking part in that investigation, is leading that investigation. Diplomatic security will assist as well. But to our knowledge, no one had claimed responsibility for the attack, and we’re not going to speculate at this period on who may be responsible,” State Department spokesperson, Patrick Ventrell, said.
AFP adds: The United States is keeping up pressure on Haqqani network, a US official said Wednesday, just days ahead of a congressional deadline on whether to designate it a terrorist group. “We’ve been pretty clear for a long time... that the US policy is to put pressure on the Haqqani network,” Patrick Ventrell told journalists. “That includes both the sanctions we have already disclosed, but also military pressure as well.”