New Delhi, July 15 (IANS) As India and Pakistan held talks in a bid to revive their stalled dialogue, the US Thursday sternly warned Islamabad to stop tolerating home-grown terrorists who are trying to disrupt Indian and the American way of life.
‘Pakistan must recognize that it is contrary to their own interests, for the future in the stability of the region, to continue to tolerate the existence of insurgents within their borders,’ US National Security Adviser James Jones told CNN-IBN’s Rajdeep Sardesai in an interview.
‘So, the first means of correcting that and as a first means of showing that Pakistan wants the same thing that we want, they have to make a tough decision to go after these terrorist organisations,’ Jones, who wrapped up his two-day visit to India Thursday, said.
‘Moreover, they need to state concretely and publicly that this is a matter of policy and this cannot be tolerated,’ he stressed.
‘Yes. We want to see a more comprehensive programme that addresses all aspects of terrorism. Because all of these groups that we are finding out are linked,’ Jones said when asked whether the US will see action as Hafiz Saeed, the suspected mastermind of the 26/11 attacks, as a test of Pakistan’s seriousness in dealing with terrorism.
‘They are not necessarily targeting one nation or the other. They are terrorist organisations that have in mind to disrupt India, to disrupt our way of life and they are actively planning to do that,’ he said.
Jones also indicated that the US was willing to provide Indian investigators more access to American-Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba operative David Headley, who has disclosed that besides LeT operatives, some serving and retired officers of the Pakistani Army were involved in the Mumbai terror spree.
‘I think the state of our bilateral relationship is such a good quality, that we would cooperate with anything that India needs to better understand the threat that it faces,’ he replied.
In his talks with his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi in Islamabad, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna pressed Pakistan to take urgent action against Saeed and all those involved in the Mumbai attacks and reminded them of the disclosures made by Headley in this regard.
