WASHINGTON - Under some intense questioning by Indian journalists, a US State Department spokesman said that Washington could not force the pace of Pakistani investigation into the terrorist attack on Indian Air Force base in Pathankot, as he repeatedly pointed out that Islamabad had condemned the raid with the promise of a probe.
"It’s not for us to ascribe a timeline to somebody else’s investigation," spokesman John Kirby said when they (Indian journalists) pressed him whether the US had set a deadline for the probe.
"Obviously, in all investigations, you want it to be thorough and you want it to be complete. And clearly, we all like them to be done as quick as possible and transparently discussed when it’s complete. But this is for the Government of Pakistan to sort out how long this investigation is going to take. It’s more important to us, as it is in our own investigative issues here in the United States, that it be a good, solid, thoughtful, and comprehensive investigation, not that it be done by a certain timeline," he said at the daily press briefing on Thursday.
"We’re very cognizant of that when we conduct investigations. We’d rather get it right than get it fast, and we’ll certainly defer to Pakistani authorities to determine their own timelines and their own deadlines and the standards to which they want to hold themselves with respect to this investigation."
Asked if the US had reached out to Pakistan after India named banned Jaish-e-Muhammad and its chief Maulana Masood Azhar as being responsible for the Pathankot attack, Kirby said: “Of course, we’re talking to Pakistan about this.” But he gave no details of “the specifics of diplomatic discussions” and simply repeated “the Government of Pakistan itself has condemned this attack and made clear that they’re committed to investigate it.”
“So let’s let them do that and let’s see where the investigation goes. We obviously would like to see it investigated too, as completely and as thoroughly as possible, so that we can better understand what happened,” Kirby said.
“The Government of Pakistan has also said that they’re not going to discriminate between terrorist groups as part of its counterterrorism operations,” he noted. "And this is a country that knows well the threat of terrorism. We’ve talked about this. Soldiers have been killed. Innocent Pakistani civilians have been killed by terrorists and continue to be. It is a regional challenge that requires real regional solutions, and we want Pakistan to be a part of those solutions."
The Washington-based Indian journalists have been fielding anti-Pakistan questions to US spokesmen, but they have remained cautious in their response.
When told by an Indian correspondent that after the 2008 Mumbai attack in which six Americans were also killed, the US had asked Pakistan to act, but to no avail, Kirby said nobody can look at the US “counterterrorism record over the last decade or so and say we’re not doing anything.”
The countries in the region too could do more, he said. “Which is why we continue to encourage bilateral, multilateral efforts in the region to get at this particular threat. The relationship with Pakistan’s complicated, I get that. And we don’t always agree on everything,” he acknowledged.
“And I can’t speak for how long it might take them to complete an investigation or the degree to which they intend to be transparent about it after they’ve completed it.”“And as for the Mumbai attackers, we’ve said and I’ll say it again today: We obviously want to see all the perpetrators brought to justice,” Kirby said. “We know that that can take a long time. It took an awful long time to bring Osama bin Laden to justice, but we did. So it can be hard.” The US encourages an "aggressive" approach to counter-terrorism operations by Pakistan and other regional powers, Kirby said, and expressed willingness to support such operations as required or deemed fit by those nations.
The State Department spokesperson could not confirm the veracity of the report written by former CIA official Bruce Riedel that ISI was behind the Pathankot attack.
"I saw Mr Riedel's piece. I'm not in a position to confirm the veracity of his conclusions," he said.
The US didn’t “have an independent assessment of who was behind this attack,” he said. “A, it just happened two days ago; B, it’s being investigated by the Pakistanis. They’ve condemned it, we condemned it,” Kirby repeated. “Let’s let their investigation move forward and we’ll see where it goes.”
Asked if he believed the Pathankot attack was carried out to derail the peace process between India and Pakistan, Kirby said: “I have no idea what the motivation for that attack would be.”