Share this story!            

US must be patient with new govt in Pakistan: Gates

* US defence secretary says Islamabad needs time to ‘inform
itself’ about circumstances in Tribal Areas

BRUSSELS: The United States government must remain patient with the new Pakistani government and work with it to take stronger action against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants operating along the Afghan border, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday.

Time: Gates said Islamabad needed time to “inform itself” about circumstances in the Tribal Areas where Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives have found safe haven.

About the Pakistani government’s efforts to strike peace agreements with tribal elements, Gates said, “I think it’s fair to say that we have some scepticism, based on past experiences, whether some of these agreements will work out, but it’s their country and we have to give them the chance to try and deal with it in the way they think is best.”

He said that reports of detainee abuse in the Guantanamo Bay prison operations had given US “a black eye”.

“I have often said that I thought, as have both the president and the secretary of state, that we would like to close Guantanamo,” he said adding that, “I think that despite the fact that in many respects Guantanamo has become a state-of-the-art prison now, early reports of abuses and so on unquestionably were a black eye for the United States.”

The detention centre in south-eastern Cuba opened in January 2002, mainly holding prisoners taken on the battlefields of Afghanistan in the months after US forces invaded to topple the Taliban regime. About 270 men are being currently held at the facility and most have not been charged with any crime.

Gates was asked at a news conference about Thursday’s US Supreme Court ruling that gives suspected terrorists the right to go to American federal courts to seek their release from detention at Guantanamo.

Gates spoke at the conclusion of two days of NATO meetings, unrelated to Guantanamo. He told reporters he would wait until he returned to Washington and received the court decision’s briefing regarding the future of Guantanamo prison facility. “I’m not going to make any judgment now,” he said. ap

Home | National

Share this story!