Sherry Rehman terms Leon Panetta’s remarks unhelpful

Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States Sherry Rehman has criticized statements given by US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta, saying these remarks would reduce the space for narrowing differences between the two countries.

Embassy of Pakistan issued a statement in reply to the remarks of US Defence Secretary in which strongest language used l to describe the strained ties between Washington and Islamabad.

The ambassador observed, “This kind of public messaging from a senior member of the US Administration is taken very seriously in Pakistan, and reduces the space for narrowing our bilateral differences at a critical time in the negotiations”.

She lamented that it added an unconstructive twist to the process and left little oxygen for those of us seeking to break a deadlock.

A day back, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta had said that the US would continue to attack al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal regions of FATA, rejecting Islamabad’s about the violation of its sovereignty.

He observed, “We have made it very clear that we are going to continue to defend ourselves. Washington is losing patience over its failure to eliminate safe havens for insurgents who attack US troops in neighboring Afghanistan”.

Lashing out at Pakistan and the Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani Network, he said they were witnessing uptick violence in recent days.

Panetta said it was an increasing concern that this safe hideout exist and there were those like Haqqani groups were making use of that to attack their allied forces battling in Afghanistan.

He noted, “For that reason, it’s extremely important that Pakistan take action to prevent this kind of safe haven. We have made that very clear time and time again and we will continue to do that. But as I said, we are reaching the limits of our patience”.

Both Afghanistan and the US believed that unless safe hideouts in Pakistan are destroyed they could not win war against terrorism.

In Kandahar on Wednesday, 23 civilians were killed when two Taliban bombers blew themselves up at a makeshift bazaar and truck stop near a major NATO base.

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Posted by Faisal Farooq on Jun 8 2012. Filed under National, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.