WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has confirmed reports that the Obama administration is quietly urging India and Pakistan to resume their dialogue stalled after the Mumbai terror attacks.
‘We believe that India and Pakistan actually face a number of common challenges, and we welcome a dialogue between them,’ said Mrs Clinton in her address to the US-India Business Council in Washington.
‘As we have said before, the pace, scope and character of that dialogue is something that Indian and Pakistani leaders will decide on their own terms and in their own time,’ she added.
In early June, the United States launched a diplomatic push, sending Special Representative Richard Holbrooke and Under-Secretary of State William Burns to South Asia. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Clinton confirmed that she would visit India and Pakistan next month.
After the Swat operation, the Americans believe that Pakistan is now serious in combating the Taliban and want India to help Islamabad win this fight.
Secretary Clinton also acknowledged this in her speech, saying that ‘as Pakistan now works to take on the challenge of terrorists in its own country, I am confident that India as well as the United States will support those efforts’.
Other US officials, however, say that a full revival of the dialogue process is not possible yet. But they point out that Washington’s efforts are already beginning to show results.
On June 15, President Asif Ali Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met for the first time since the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Officials in Washington say that US diplomatic pressure played a major rule in arranging this brief meeting between the two leaders on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Russia.
Diplomatic observers in Washington say the Obama administration sees easing India-Pakistan tension as an essential part of its regional stabilisation strategy.
The Americans believe that it would enable the Pakistani military to focus on fighting the Taliban without having to worry about its eastern border with India.
APP adds: The US has also sought more engagement from European countries with Pakistan and Afghanistan. ‘We are indeed actively encouraging the Europeans to do more on the civilian side in Afghanistan and Pakistan, just as we are (doing),’ Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon told a Congressional hearing, according to the Business Standard.
‘There’s a Pakistan pledging conference this week, and we have been strongly encouraging our European allies to get more engaged there and do what they can, because we have also reached the conclusion that you can’t solve Afghanistan unless you solve Pakistan, and that requires a lot of assistance,’ Mr Gordon said.
‘We have told them we understand there are constraints on what you can do on the military side, but it’s in our common interest that you do more on the civil side. And we hope that they will,’ he said in his testimony.