Sunday, December 4, 2011

Plea to review Bonn meeting boycott turned down

WASHINGTON/ ISLAMABAD: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telephoned Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Saturday, urging him to reconsider Pakistan’s decision to stay out of the Bonn conference on Afghanistan, diplomatic sources told Dawn. The conference is scheduled to begin on Monday.
But Mr Gilani told Mrs Clinton that a review of the decision was not feasible at this stage since the Parliamentary Committee on National Security had supported the move when it met three days ago, according to a press release from the prime minister’s office.
The Parliament has taken up the terms of cooperation with the US. This will ensure national ownership and clarity about the relationship, the prime minister told the secretary of State.
The Secretary of State conveyed her personal condolences on the deaths of Pakistani soldiers. She added that the attack was not intentional and that we must wait for the outcome of the investigation. “The US has the highest regard for Pakistan’s sovereignty. This incident should not be allowed to jeopardise the bilateral relationship,” Hillary Clinton said in her conversation with the prime minister.
The Pakistan government decided not to attend the summit in protest against last Saturday’s Nato air assault that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at military posts in Mohmand Agency.
On Wednesday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai also called Prime Minister Gilani, asking him to reconsider the boycott decision, but Mr Gilani politely turned down his request.
In Washington, three key pillars of the US administration — the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon — have not only stressed their desire to see Pakistan in Bonn but have also expressed hopes that tensions caused by the Nato air strikes would not derail the bilateral relationship.
On Friday, the State Department said it hoped that “Pakistan will be a part of this process going forward, no matter what”.
“We think it would be regrettable if Pakistan were not to attend this conference. We think it’s important for the region, it’s important for the neighbourhood, it’s important that we all work to put Afghanistan on a square and solid footing. Our engagement continues,” the department’s spokesman Mark Toner told a briefing in Washington.
At the White House, Press Secretary Jay Carney emphasised the importance of Pakistan’s role in resolving the Afghan crisis and said: “We urge them to attend the conference in Bonn.”
At the Pentagon, spokesman George Little noted that the relationship with Pakistan remained very important to the United States.
“We think that cooperation with Pakistan on a variety of fronts, to include counterterrorism, is essential,” he said. “We realise the bumps in the road that we’ve experienced over the past several months, but we’re going to work very hard with our Pakistani counterparts to get over this latest bump in the road.”
“We are working with them on our overall relationship. We understand that this is complicated by events, as has been the case at various times this year. But it’s an important relationship that we continue to work on, because it’s in the interest of the American people and our national security that we continue to work on it,” Mr Carney told reporters at the White House.
At the State Department, Mr Toner also addressed two other issues: a change in Pakistan’s rules of engagement, which now allows Pakistani soldiers to retaliate, and that some Pakistani officials had cleared NATO air strikes.
Such developments, Mr Toner added, further increased the significance of the investigation the US military was conducting into the incident.
“It’s absolutely vital, and it’s one of the goals of this investigation, I think, that we improve communications and we can improve real-time communications to avoid these kinds of border incidents in the future,” he said.
“It’s never good when, obviously, you get people talking and commenting outside of that investigation, whether it’s on the Pakistani or on our side. It’s very critical, I think, that we allow this investigation to play out, and we see concretely what was discovered,” said the State Department official when asked to comment on US media reports that Pakistan had cleared the strikes.
When reminded that the US reluctance in apologising to Pakistan over the incident was increase anti-American feelings in the country, the Pentagon spokesman said: “Let me say, in the strongest possible terms, that this was not in any way, shape or form an intentional attack by the United States military on Pakistan.”
The United States considered its relationship with Pakistan “absolutely critical and essential,” he added. “And the sign of strength in any relationship is how we work through very serious disagreements and incidents such as this.”

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