Barack Obama warns Pakistan that he will respond this time: Book

Frustrated over Pakistan's lackluster response to the war against terrorism, US President Barack Obama, sent his top aides to warn Pakistan that he would have no other option but to respond, if they do not take decisive action against terrorist safe havens.

Adding to the frustration, the Pakistani establishment in particular the all powerful Army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani refused to adhere to any of the four demands the US made through national security adviser Gen James Jones and CIA chief Leon Panetta during that trip in May this year,  says noted investigative journalist Bob Woodward, in his latest book, "Obama's War".

"The president wants everyone in Pakistan to understand if such an attack connected to a Pakistani group is successful there are some things even he would not be able to stop. Just there are political realities in Pakistan, there are realities in the United States. 

No one will be able to stop the response and consequences. There is not a threat, just a statement of political fact," Zardai was told during the meeting, the book claims.

Giving a series of specific instances how terrorists' leaders are operating unhindered inside Pakistan, Jones told Zardari that Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the LeT commander if the 2008 Mumbai attacks, is not being adequately interrogated and "he continues to direct LeT operations from his detention center."

LeT is operating in Afghanistan and the group carried out a recent attack at a guesthouse there. Intelligence also shows that LeT is threatening attacks in the United States and the possibility is rising each day, Jones said according to the book.

After meeting Zardari, US officials met Kayani, wherein Jones told the Pakistan army chief that the clock was starting now all the four requests made by Obama.    

"But Kayani would not budge very much. He had other concerns. "I'll be the first to admit, I'm India centric," he said, according to the book.

Woodward wrote that Jones and Panetta left feeling they had made only baby steps.

 "How can you fight a war and  safe havens across the border? Panetta asked in frustration. The latest intelligence showed trucks crossing the border that were full of Taliban combatants with all kinds of weapons packed in the back. They were being waved through into Afghanistan to kill Americans at checkpoints controlled by the Pakistanis.

"It's a crazy kind of war," Panetta said. 

According to the ward winning author, Pakistan has repeatedly refused to accept US request to share names of all airline passengers travelling to or from Pakistan on the grounds that such a disclosure would violate their sovereignty.

They also suspected it would give the US insight into where their intelligence officers were going. Most ISI agents were flying east to India or Bangladesh, so the US had proposed just getting data on flights heading west to the Persian Gulf, Europe and the United States. But the Pakistanis has stubbornly resisted," Woodward wrote.

In the event of a terrorist attack, the Obama official worried that it would be hard for Obama to defend Pakistan because their leaders had refused to do what had been simple easy, especially on the visas and passengers lists, he wrote.