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Pak must shun India 'obsession', Afghan 'meddling' 'bad habits': Obama | Noting Pakistan's 'obsession' with India, US President Barack Obama has said that Islamabad must shun the 'bad' custom of viewing its neighbouring nation as a primary
threat and realise that it was extremists emanating from its own soil that are threatening the country's very existence. Speaking during a joint press conference
with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, Obama pointed out that his administration
was working both with the Pakistani and Afghan leadership to help them do away
with some of their 'bad habits' and old suspicions. While describing Pakistan's
obsession with India as one of its 'bad habits', he acknowledged that Islamabad
is now slowly overcoming the practice. "I think there has been in the past a view
on the part of Pakistan that their primary rival, India, was their only concern,"
The Dawn quoted Obama, as saying. "What you've seen over the last several months
is a growing recognition that they have a cancer in their midst; that the extremist
organisations that have been allowed to congregate and use as a base the frontier
areas to then go into Afghanistan, that now threatens Pakistan's sovereignty,"
he added. Responding to a comment of an Afghan journalist that Pakistan was the
"the only reason that Afghanistan was not civilised today", the US President said
Washington was determined to help improve relations between Islamabad and Kabul.
"Our goal is to break down some of the old suspicions and the old bad habits and
continue to work with the Pakistani government to see their interest in a stable
Afghanistan which is free from foreign meddling," he said. During the briefing,
Karzai was asked about reconciliation with the Taliban, to which he replied that
there are "thousands of Taliban who are not against Afghanistan or against the
Afghan people or their country; who are not against America either or the rest
of the world". Karzai said there are many Afghan Taliban who wanted to come back
if provided an opportunity and political means to do so. "It's this group of the
Taliban that you're addressing in the peace Jirga. It is this group that is our
intention," he said. Without mentioning Pakistan, the Afghan President said that
the Taliban being controlled from 'outside' were increasing troubles for his country. |
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