The United States delivered a blunt message to Pakistan, asking Islamabad to adhere to UN sanctions on the Jamaat-ud-Daawa, front for the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
NEW YORK. ISLAMABAD: The United States delivered a blunt message to Pakistan on Tuesday, asking Islamabad to adhere to UN sanctions on the Jamaat-ud-Daawa, front for the Lashkar-e-Taiba, and crack down on its infrastructure, including seminaries, schools, and charity offices.
Pakistan has been insisting that the UN sanctions did not cover the Jamaat’s seminaries, schools, colleges and universities and its charity infrastructure.
But this has not gone down well with the US. Diplomatic sources in Pakistan confirmed that Washington has asked Islamabad to take over the entire chain of Jamaat-run educational institutions and appoint administrators there to end the influence of the banned organisation on society.
Officials in Islamabad said the federal education department had already collected countrywide data of registered educational institutions of the Jamaat. But they fear any action against the outfit could evoke strong reaction from the people and clerics.
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, however, told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York: “Pakistan is going to have to untangle the difficult circumstances the Jamaat offers because I understand there are so-called charitable activities. But the United States learned the hard way that sometimes these are too intertwined with organisations that have terrorist ties.”
She said the US was pressing Pakistan to carry out the UN sanctions in “letter and spirit” and hinted that this was the only way president Asif Ali Zardari’s civilian government would win respect. “I know the Pakistani government wants to deal in good faith with the world… it wants very much to be respected in international politics,” she said.
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