Pakistan’s leader says unilateral strikes unacceptable

Pakistan’s leader says unilateral strikes unacceptable (NSI News Source Info) WASHINGTON — November 12, 2008: Pakistan’s prime minister yesterday reminded visiting American senators, including Sheldon Whitehouse, that his government opposes unilateral U.S. strikes against suspected terrorists within his nation’s borders. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani “was very polite and very courteous” during his meeting in Islamabad with Whitehouse and Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine, “but he made his point very clear,” the Rhode Island Democrat said in a telephone interview yesterday. Gilani thus touched on one of the basic strategic and diplomatic dilemmas of the war in Afghanistan, said Whitehouse. Fighters from al-Qaida and the Taliban can attack Afghanistan government forces and their U.S. and European allies and flee to frontier sanctuaries inside Pakistan. But U.S. forces cannot go after enemy troops across the border without Pakistan’s cooperation — or else they risk offending an important ally’s sense of sovereignty. But Whitehouse said he saw indications that the United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan are finding ways to improve joint operations against a common enemy. For example, he said the allies have established the first of several jointly staffed bases in the borderlands where their military and intelligence officers can share computer and radio transmissions from the battlefield and plan responses together. That was one of several signs of what Whitehouse described as grounds for hope of an improved military situation in Afghanistan. He spoke by telephone from Doha, Qatar, after a three-day round of meetings in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He also met Afghan President Hamid Karzai and with military and diplomatic leaders from the United States and its allies — including those of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which provides about half of the counterinsurgency force in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, Whitehouse and Snowe, who sit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, had briefings in Kabul, Bagram Air Force Base, Jalalabad and a forward operating base near the border of Pakistan. Yesterday they traveled to the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, where they had meetings with U.S. Ambassador Anne W. Patterson and other American officials as well as Gilani and some of his government’s top officers. Whitehouse said a persistent theme of the talks with American and allied officials was the need for more troops and the money and equipment to support them. He said U.S. military personnel also expressed frustration with the difficulty in responding to the cross-border operations of the Taliban and al-Qaida. American military leaders also described the need for more NATO troops — operating, ideally, under fewer self-imposed rules that restrict their availability for certain combat and other counterinsurgency operations. Whitehouse said he thinks President-elect Barack Obama would do well to raise those issues with members of the NATO alliance when he becomes president. Whitehouse also said he was inspired by the “astonishingly high” morale of the U.S. troops and officers he encountered in Afghanistan. He spoke, too, of the stories he heard of substantial progress in the efforts — parallel in some ways to the military successes in Iraq over the past year — to take the fight into what had been secure areas for the insurgents.