U.S. aides, Pakistan's ambassador square off

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Got to love ambassador Rehman. She is not sold out & unlike her predecessor she is looking out for Pakistan’s interest.

(http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2012/07/us-aides-pakistans-ambassador-square-off-130352.html)

By JOSH GERSTEIN | 7/27/12 8:51 PM EDT
ASPEN, Colo.—Two architects of the Obama Administration’s policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan squared off with Pakistan’s ambassador Friday in a discussion over the country’s troubled relationship with the United States, drone strikes and safe havens for militants on Pakistani territory.

The first flash point was Pakistan’s treatment of Dr. Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani physician who was sentenced to 33 years in prison for treason after helping the Central Intelligence Agency try to obtain DNA from residents of the compound where Osama bin Laden was found and killed by U.S. Navy SEALs last May.

60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft led off the discussion on that issue by asking provocatively if Afridi’s punishment demonstrated that the Pakistanis “have more loyalty to Osama bin Laden than they do to the United States.”

“In a word, I’d call it outrageous,” said Lt. Gen Karl Eikenberry (Ret.), who served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011.

Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., Sherry Rehman, insisted that Afridi’s conviction demonstrated that rule of law in Pakistan is alive and well. “We are working according to a constitutional norm,” she said, joining the Aspen Security Forum panel via a video link from Washington, D.C.

Rehman said Afridi “was contracting with a foreign intelligence agency without any permissions. He was contracting with militant groups who were beheading our soldiers,” she said, referring to the acts underlying his treat conviction. “He had no clue that he was engaged in a fight against or search for Osama bin Laden.”

Rehman said Pakistan shouldn’t receive any more criticism for militants in its difficult-to-govern areas than Afghanistan does for similar hideouts on its territory—a statement that drew a quick and sharp retort from Lt. Gen Doug Lute (Ret.), a White House aide who is President Barack Obama’s special adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“There’s no comparison of the Pakistani Taliban’s relatively recent, small-in-scale presence inside Afghanistan…to the decades-long experience and relations between elements of the Pakistani government and the Afghan Taliban. So to compare these is simply, I think, unfair,” Lute said bluntly.

Rehman let loose a few zingers of her own, saying that Pakistan doesn’t have the option of '“walking away from” the Afghanistan-Pakistan problem, the way the U.S. may end up doing.

And after Lute parried a question about still-classified drone strikes in Pakistan by referring generically to U.S.-Pakistan “cooperation,” Rehman said it is time for that sort of “robotic warfare” to end.

“The drone strikes now see diminishing returns,” Rehman said, while acknowledging that up to this point they have helped kill dangerous militants. “We will be seeking an end to drone strikes and there will be no compromise on that.”

“We don’t welcome or sanctuary foreign fighters on our soil….There is no question now of hedging bets,” Rehman insisted, before adding her own memorable retort: “This is a new Pakistan. Catch up, gentlemen.”

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Re: U.S. aides, Pakistan’s ambassador square off

:k:

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Re: U.S. aides, Pakistan’s ambassador square off

I respect the lady, all the best to her. :k:

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Re: U.S. aides, Pakistan’s ambassador square off

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/28/world/asia/at-security-conference-tense-talk-between-us-and-pakistan.html?_r=2&smid=tw-share

Tense Talk in Conference Between U.S. and PakistanASPEN, Colo. — Tensions flared between the United States and Pakistan on Friday, as two top officials traded accusations of doing too little to combat Taliban sanctuaries in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The tart exchange between the officials, Douglas E. Lute, President Obama’s top adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, took place during a conference in this bucolic mountain setting.
Under questioning from Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes,” Ms. Rehman, speaking on videoconference from Washington, said that Pakistani Taliban fighters, who have taken refuge in two remote provinces in eastern Afghanistan, were increasingly carrying out rocket attacks and cross-border raids against Pakistan.
“These are critical masses of people that come in; this is not just potshots,” Ms. Rehman said. She said that on 52 different occasions in the last eight months Pakistan had provided to American and NATO commanders in Afghanistan the locations from which the militants were attacking, to no avail.
Immediately, Mr. Lute, a retired three-star Army general and deputy national security adviser who rarely speaks in public, fired back. “There’s no comparison of the Pakistani Taliban’s relatively recent, small-in-scale presence inside Afghanistan to the decades-long experience and relationship between elements of the Pakistani government and the Afghan Taliban,” he said. “To compare these is simply unfair.”
Pakistani officials have long faced criticism from Americans and Afghans for what they say is their failure to stop militant assaults originating from safe havens in Pakistan, often with the complicity of Pakistan’s main spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate.
But in the past several months, Pakistani officials have started accusing American and allied officials of the same problem coming from Afghanistan.
Just last month, Afghan-based Taliban militants crossed into Pakistan to kill at least 13 Pakistani soldiers, beheading some of them, the military said.
A senior Pakistani military official said at the time that more than 100 Taliban militants armed with heavy weapons had crossed the border in the attack. After the raid, the militants retreated back into Afghanistan.
Pakistani Taliban fighters fled into Afghanistan starting in the summer of 2009 after a major assault by the Pakistani military on the Swat Valley in northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province.
Many have taken refuge in Afghanistan’s Kunar and Nuristan Provinces, areas where they have strengthened their presence as American forces have withdrawn. Pakistani officials say that two senior Taliban commanders — Maulana Fazlullah from Swat and Faqir Muhammad from Bajaur — are taking refuge there while their fighters plan attacks in Pakistan.
“We’re feeling a little bit of blowback from ISAF redeployments along the border,” Ms. Rehman said, referring to the NATO command in Afghanistan.
The barbed exchange came during a wide-ranging 90-minute panel discussion in the Aspen Security Forum at the Aspen Institute here. The New York Times is a media sponsor of the four-day conference. At the beginning of the session, it seemed that Mr. Lute and Ms. Rehman were intent on building upon the recently agreed deal to reopen NATO supply lines into Afghanistan.
Ms. Rehman said that the two countries had experienced “an extraordinarily difficult period” after an American airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at an outpost near the Afghan border last November, but that they were still staunch allies. Mr. Lute said the countries shared the vital interests of defeating Al Qaeda and stabilizing Afghanistan.
But the bonhomie did not last long. Ms. Rehman also criticized the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone strikes in Pakistan, saying they had reached the point of “diminishing returns” while also whipping up anti-American sentiment in the country.
“This adds to the pool of recruits we’re fighting against,” she said.

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Re: U.S. aides, Pakistan’s ambassador square off

well said Sherry Rehman:k: good to know there is someone out there who has guts to stand up for Pakistan.

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Re: U.S. aides, Pakistan’s ambassador square off

Quotable quote :clap:

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Re: U.S. aides, Pakistan's ambassador square off

pure bs. obviously there is a compulsion in the minds of officials and many people of Pakistan to turn a blind eye or be in wanton denial of government agency level sponsorship of terrorists including providing safe keeping services to terrorists such as bin laden. yeah, you don't have the option to walk away from Af-Pak problems because you are it!

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Re: U.S. aides, Pakistan's ambassador square off

Good Going, Keep it up Sherry Rehman!