US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia expressed concern after the secretary level talks between India and Pak were cancelled.
NEW YORK: The United States watched high-level peace talks between India and Pakistan come under a cloud and urged both countries to avoid the 'discord of the past' by working together to really get to the group behind the Mumbai blasts.
Richard Boucher, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia expressed concern after this week’s secretary level talks between India and Pakistan were cancelled.
Prime Minister Singh said the Mumbai attackers had support from “across the border” and warned that the peace talks could be jeopardised if Pakistan did not live up to a promise to curb terrorism directed against India.
“Some of the groups that are suspected in these bombings are actually outlawed in Pakistan. So we should look at these horrible events not as a reason to fall back into the discord of the past but as a reason to move forward together and really get to the group that is involved in this problem of terrorism in the region,” Boucher told DNA on the sidelines of a convention in New York.
“We have seen a lot of progress in India-Pakistan relations and I hope that progress is maintained and when it comes to issues of terrorism they can find that they need to work together,” he added.
Boucher’s remarks come at a time when the US has been leaning on Pakistan to do more to step up its military campaign which has failed abysmally to root out al-Qaeda militants from its notoriously lawless tribal region bordering Afghanistan leaving it home to a kind of rogue’s gallery.
Boucher subtly put pressure on Pakistan by urging India to share the results of the investigation with the international community; “Let the Government of India tell us who did it. It is a horrible action - no excuse for this kind of terrorism whatsoever. I think we all have our suspicions about who might have done it but to me this is the time to let the investigators find out who is really behind it.”
“We need to face up to it and see what we can do. We need to see if there are sources of terrorism in other countries — we need to work with those countries and try and move things forward so that we can get to these groups,” he added.
Meanwhile, India is also reportedly using back channels to urge the US to block F-16 sales to Pakistan. Earlier this week, US lawmakers who are worried about warplane technology leakage to China, demanded more safeguards for a $5 billion sale to Pakistan of F-16 fighter jets.
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