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U.S.-Pakistan dialogue faces prickly issues
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Suspected militants accused of plotting to kill the prime minister and several senior government figures sit inside a secure police van in Bahawalpur, located in Pakistan's Punjab province, October 14, 2010.
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WASHINGTON |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and his national security team discussed the need to ramp up pressure on extremist safe-havens in Pakistan on Wednesday before meeting with Pakistani officials participating in talks on broadening bilateral relations.
Obama and visiting Pakistani officials -- including Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani -- agreed on the "importance of cooperating toward a peaceful and stable outcome" in the Afghan war, the White House said.
But their visit came after a regular meeting of Obama's national security team, which discussed Afghan President Hamid Karzai's reconciliation efforts with the Taliban and U.S. concerns about the need to pressure Islamist extremist safe-havens in Pakistan, the White House said.
Obama's meeting with Pakistani officials came on the opening day of the third round of the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue, a series of wide-ranging talks aimed at broadening relations between the two countries beyond the war against Islamist insurgents.
Officials will discuss everything from water to energy in the three days of talks, but the dominant element was the ongoing counterinsurgency campaigns in the Afghan-Pakistan border region and the strain the conflict has put on bilateral relations.
Analysts anticipated little movement on security matters because of widely differing strategic interests.
Separately, the White House announced Obama would not visit Pakistan during his trip to Asia next month but that he was committed to a trip there in 2011, as well as welcoming Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to Washington.
APOLOGY
During a session at the Pentagon, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Kayani discussed long-term security assistance to Islamabad.
Gates also apologized to Kayani for a recent cross-border incursion by U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan that killed two Pakistani border guards, a spokesman said.
The incident soured ties between the two allies and prompted the closure of a border crossing near the Khyber Pass to trucks ferrying supplies to NATO forces.
"Pakistani-U.S. relations have taken a hit in the past few weeks," said Mark Quarterman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's actually very timely that the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue is occurring after this period so they can sit down and clear the air."
Officials organized into 13 working groups -- including agriculture, water, energy and law enforcement -- meet on Wednesday and Thursday. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Qureshi wrap up the talks with a plenary session on Friday.
Key issues were a multi-year U.S. military assistance package for Islamabad and floods that inundated an Italy-sized swath of Pakistan in August, causing $9.7 billion in damages.
"The talks are important to Pakistan because they provide a way to broaden the discussion beyond just counterterrorism and to talk about things that are important to Pakistan: energy cooperation, trade, agriculture, a whole host of issues," said Lisa Curtis, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation think tank.
But the war in Afghanistan was expected to dominate the conversation.
SAME PAGE ON AFGHANISTAN?
"The objective of the strategic dialogue will be to get us as close as possible to the same strategic page in Afghanistan and to make a public declaration to that effect," said Teresita Schaffer, the head of the South Asia Program at the CSIS.
The strategic dialogue, which began with a first round in March, comes as the two sides work to repair relations strained by the September 20 cross-border incursion.
The incursion came amid ramped-up U.S. drone attacks on northwest Pakistan and U.S. criticism of Pakistani failure to aggressively pursue al Qaeda militants.
"Such acts do not help war against terrorists, rather such acts complicate the issues," a senior Pakistani government official said on condition of anonymity.
Differences over the war in the border region are strong. The U.S. military is under pressure to show signs of progress in Afghanistan ahead of a December review by Obama to assess whether his war strategy is effective.
(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Washington, and Chris Allbritton and Zeeshan Haider in Islambad; Editing by Xavier Briand)
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This U.S.-Pakistan strategic dialogue is another foolish and futile Barack Obama effort to close the American failure in Afghanistan without admitting defeat – like the U.S. did in Vietnam. With the 2012 presidential re-election campaign expected to start early, Barack Obama has slipped in the polls from 68% upon his election, to 44% now. Worse yet, only 38% of Americans think he is handling the economy well. Obama, therefore, see a dark cloud on his re-election horizon, and the U.S. -Pakistani talks are just a last ditch effort to prop-up himself, or become history after one term as president. And that possibility has been growing steadily, as the coalition of young voters and independents who propelled Obama to the presidency is in tatters now.
What is the possibility of success in the U.S. – Pakistani strategic talks? ZERO!!! George Bush foolishly thought that the U.S. can overthrow
the Taliban in Afghanistan, and then bribe the Pakistani government with $ billions of U.S. aid to support a puppet U.S. despotic regime in Kabul, similar to pro-U.S. despotic regimes in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc. But the Pashtun Taliban proved to be a tough “hornet’s nest” for the U.S. to defeat. And after 10 years of war, Obama has come to realize that the U.S. superpower image is shredded in Afghanistan, and that would likely shred his chances of re-election in 2012 – unless Pakistan declare open war on Taliban, and use its army to destroy the Taliban, and save the U.S. from the “embarrassment of defeat.” It is a replay of the U.S. failure in Vietnam, where the U.S. continued the war for 5 years while it was searching for a way avoid the “embarrassment of defeat” – as it does now in Afghanistan. (U.S., PBS Broadcast Documentary, October 5, 2010)
Would Pakistan start an open war with Taliban, and wipe out 42% of Afghans -the Pashtun- who comprise the Taliban insurgency, to help the U.S.
“save face” by claiming victory in Afghanistan? Of course not. The Pakistanis are preoccupied with a possible war with India -in the East, and
their priority is to keep their back in Afghanistan in friendly hands. And that means a Pakistani controlled regime in Kabul, not a U.S. puppet
regime that can sell them out on orders from Washington. After all, the U.S, and Pakistan are hostile allies, but they cooperate by necessity,
even though their long term goals re irreconcilable! Pakistani national security, therefore is not for sale, not for $ 7.5 billion (the total U.S. aid), but for any price! Worse yet, for the desperate U.S. efforts to find a “face-saving” way out of Afghanistan, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the Northern Afghan provinces have come under the Taliban control lately, with the support of Tajiks and other ethnic
groups who have become disillusioned with the corrupt Karzai regime in Kabul. (Wall Street Journal, October 19, 2010)
Can the U.S. turn 10 years of war failure in Afghanistan around? No way. The writing is on the wall for the U.S. in Afghanistan. The U.S. talks
with Pakistan now is a repeat of of a similar U.S. effort at the end of the the Vietnam war too. Richard Nixon sent his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, to China’s to fashion a “face-saving” way of Vietnam with China’s help. Kissinger received a cold reception from Chinese premier Chu En Lai who told him straight in the face: “You [the U.S.] don’t belong there. Get out!” on quote. Too bad, Obama doesn’t know history, and now Vietnam’s war history seems to repeat itself in Afghanistan. Nikos Retsos, retired professor
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