Washington, July 2 (IANS) Even as the US talks with Pakistan about its relationship with Islamabad since the US raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout, the US considers it important that India and Pakistan continue their ‘constructive’ dialogue.
‘We said last week and continue to say that dialogue between India and Pakistan is a very constructive one,’ State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters Friday when asked if the US was asking Pakistan to do more to counter terrorism as demanded by New Delhi.
‘We think it’s important that that continue, and we want to see cooperation on many fronts, including counterterrorism, between the two countries,’ he said.
On its part, the US has ‘talked a lot about – a great deal about our relationship with Pakistan over the last couple of months, and certainly since the raid in Abbottabad (on Osama’s hideout) and the significant questions about what kind of support network was there,’ Toner said.
The US, he said had ‘engaged with the Pakistani Government at high levels, from the Secretary to the then CIA chief Leon Panetta to address some of these issues, difficult issues, but also to say that we are committed to working with Pakistan in a constructive way on counterterrorism’.
While no date has yet been set for the next session of the US-Pakistan strategic dialogue, he said: ‘We have high-level engagement with Pakistan, as well as the substantive working groups continue to meet as well.’
‘I’m not going to sugarcoat the fact that we’ve had some pretty serious challenges in our bilateral relationship, but the strategic dialogue continues,’ Toner said when asked if political considerations were preventing the scheduling of the dialogue.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
