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| US pledges to end 'incoherent' policy towards Pak |
| Lalit K Jha/ PTI / Washington May 20, 2009, 13:06 IST |
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Promising to end "incoherent" US policy towards Pakistan, the Obama Administration has sought a "very clear and transparent" ties between the two countries.
Acknowledging that the US is responsible for the current mess in Pakistan as it quietly walked away from the country after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Obama administration's policies towards Islamabad would be qualitatively different.
"I think when we ask the question it is fair to apportion responsibility to the Pakistanis. But it's also fair for us to ask ourselves what we have done and how we have done it over all these years? And what role did we play in the situation that the Pakistanis currently confront?" she told reporters.
She was replying to a question on the billions of dollars that have been given to Pakistan in the past, but which have not yielded desired results for the US.
"I think that it is fair to say that our policy toward Pakistan over the last 30 years has been incoherent," She said, adding that she did not know any other word to use.
Clinton argued that the Obama Administration's approach towards Pakistan is qualitatively different than anything that has been tried before.
"It basically says, we support the democratically elected government but we have to have a relationship where we are very clear and transparent with one another," she said.
"We came in the '80s and helped to build up Mujahedeen to take on the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The Pakistanis were our partners in that. Their security service and their military were encouraged and funded by the United States to create the Mujahedeen in order to go after the Soviet invasion and occupation," Clinton said.
After the Soviet Union fell in 1989, Clinton said, "We basically said-- thank you very much. We had all kinds of problems in terms of sanctions being imposed on the Pakistanis."
Their democracy was not secure and was constantly at risk of and often being overtaken by the military, which stepped in when it appeared that democracy could not work, she said.
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