Focus on Pakistan at White House meeting

WASHINGTON, Oct 7: US President Barack Obama gathered his top military and political advisers in the secure White House Situation Room on Wednesday for discussions that focused primarily on Pakistan.

The participants include Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defence Secretary Robert Gates, top military brass, and US intelligence chiefs.

Gen Stanley McChrystal, the top US and Nato military commander in Afghanistan, who has requested additional 40,000 troops to subdue the Taliban, joined in the discussions by video link.

Wednesday’s “meeting focusses I think almost primarily on Pakistan,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs as the Washington Post noted that one of the proposals being discussed is the “Pakistan First” theory “championed by Vice President Jo Biden”.

The idea is to “focuss US efforts on attacking Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s tribal areas with drones or Special Forces, while backing the government’s efforts to pacify and develop the lawless areas where Al Qaeda and the Taliban are based,” the Post said an editorial titled “Why did Benazir die?”

Mr Gibbs did not address the “Pakistan First” theory in his briefing but indicated that President Obama also was focussed on the alleged Taliban safe havens inside the country.

“What the President laid out in March was a strategy that is focussed not just on Afghanistan but also on Pakistan. First and foremost on the President’s mind are those that attacked us on Sept 11, 2001; those that have through the global network of Al Qaeda have the intent and are actively planning to do so again,” said Mr Gibbs.

He said the concerns being expressed in Pakistan on the Kerry-Lugar bill was also being discussed in the Situation Room meeting.

However, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who is also in Washington during this crucial policy review process, has rejected the possibility of allowing American ground troops into Pakistan.

Calling it a red line that need not be crossed, Mr Qureshi said Pakistan did not want foreign troops on its soil.

“No, we don’t need that. We are capable of doing it ourselves,” he told CNN. Any US ground involvement, he said, “will not be accepted by the people of Pakistan ...because that’s a red line.”

But the foreign minister also said that the United States should stay in the region because a hasty exit in the past did not work. “You pulled out in a hurry when the Soviets were pushed out and look at the mess and look at the consequences we are facing.”

The Pakistan-specific meeting at the White House came exactly eight years after the United States raided Afghanistan to unseat the Taliban and bring in a government it hoped would end militancy and extremism in the region.

But as Mr Obama sat with his top advisers, some US lawmakers urged him also to consider an exit strategy, insisting that it was no more possible to win the war in Afghanistan.

However, Senator John Kerry, who chairs the powerful Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, told the media that there was no possibility of a US pullout from Afghanistan. “It is not even being discussed,” said, the senator after a meeting with Mr Obama.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post noted that Mr Biden’s “Pakistan First” theory would excuse President Obama from having to irk his political base by dispatching additional US troops. “It would nominally focus US efforts on a nuclear armed country that is of far greater strategic importance.”

The Post also noted that in a meeting with its editorial board, Foreign Minister Qureshi expressed dismay at President Obama’s public wavering on fighting the Taliban.

“If that is going to happen, why we have stuck our necks out?” he asked in the interview with the Post. “Why did Benazir die?”

Mr Qureshi also drew a contrast between Nato’s operations in the south and Pakistan’s operations against the Taliban this year. “Your troops went in and cleared the area. But once you came out, the Taliban came back in,” he was quoted as saying. “What we do is: We go in, and we clear and we hold. When you do that, it requires more contact. It requires more resources. And it means more casualties.”

On Tuesday, Mr Obama met senior Democratic and Republican lawmakers but failed to bridge the gap between the so-called hawks and doves on Afghanistan over what to do now in the war-battered country.

The doves demand an exit strategy while the hawks are asking for a deeper military commitment.

A new poll on Wednesday added to the political tumult whipped up around Mr Obama’s decision making process.

The Quinnipiac University survey found 65 per cent of voters willing to have US soldiers fight and possibly die to stamp out extremists operating in Afghanistan.

But only 38 per cent of those asked said they would be willing to send more troops to Afghanistan.