'Pak leaders do not have political steel in their backbone'

Saying that Pakistani leadership lacks "political steel in their backbone", a powerful American Senator today charged them of not convincingly telling their people about the US-led anti-terror operation in the same rhetoric that they are telling to the outside world.

"They politically do not have it inside themselves to tell the Pakistan people why we are doing it and that they are aware of it. They do not have that kind of political steel in their backbone. I have been in politics long enough to understand that. I do not condone it," senator Carl Levin said at a Congressional hearing.

Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Levin said this is one of the issue that has troubled him in recent times.

"I think that in terms of recent events, that the Pakistan army is showing a much greater willingness to take on the enemy for their own sake... not because we are asking them or we are paying them, but because from their national security perspective, it is in their interest," he observed.

"I do not know how much that has been transmitted to the Pakistan people. I know it is transmitted through interviews in the London papers, but that is not the same as the president and the Head of the Army in Pakistan transmitting that to the Pakistani people themselves," Levin argued.