“Certainly, our relationship with Pakistan is complex,” the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Pak-istan and Afghanistan, David Sedney, told reporters after a meeting in Washington last week between the defence delegations of the two countries.
“There have been a lot of ups and downs over the years, and there are a lot of areas where we still have a lot of open questions and where there are, for lack of a better word, issues that continue to fester from the past. While it’s unfortunate, that’s also understandable.”
The 18th Defence Consul-tative Group Session — the first since 2006 — was led by US Under-secretary of Defence for Policy Michele Flournoy and Pakistan’s Defence Secretary Lt-Gen (retd) Syed Athar Ali.
The first such meeting was held in 2002. The next meeting to assess progress will be held early next year in Islamabad.
Conceding that there were tensions on both sides, Mr Sedney said: “There’re things that Pakistan wants that we’re not able to do, things that we want that Pakistan is not able to do.”
The US official, however, played down the differences and insisted that the two sides understood each other’s positions on these issues as well.
Asked if Pakistan would now be more willing to take on the Afghan Taliban, the Pentagon official said the two countries had a “common commitment” to go after the extremists who threatened both. But that ability to go after the extremists, he said, depended on both capabilities and information, “and all of that doesn’t always exist at the same time”.
Asked if the talks also focussed on a new Pakistani offensive in North Waziristan, and against the Haqqani network and the Quetta shura, Mr Sedney said that such offensives were “not a simple, one-step, go-in, attack-and-then-leave” type operations.
“When we have exact information, exact targeting information, we will be providing it to Pakistan, and Secretary (of Defence Robert) Gates is expecting their cooperation.”
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