Internews/Islamabad
Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, leads a rally  in Peshawar yesterday against the US drone attacks and US pressure against the Haqqani network. During US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit, the top US diplomat pressed Pakistan to encourage talks and dismantle militant safe havens on its side of the border, as US and Afghan troops push a new offensive against the Haqqanis in eastern Afghanistan
Pakistan has told the United States that it is ready to facilitate its talks with the Afghan Taliban, but cannot become a guarantor to the negotiating process, a news report said yesterday.
Local media quoted a senior security official as saying that the Taliban would themselves determine the propriety or otherwise of sitting at the negotiating table with the United States.
“Contact with the Haqqani group is there, but they are not in our pocket,” was the message put across during a crucial meeting between the two sides on Friday.
The US delegation, headed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, included the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Martin Dempsey and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief David Petreaus while Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, Chief of the Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and the chief of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha represented Pakistan.
“Pakistan must not be blamed in case of failure of attempts (by US) for reconciliation with the Taliban as it does not spoon-feed them,”  the official remarked.
He said both sides felt that reconciliation was the way forward, but the devil lay in the detail. He said Pakistan had raised certain issues with Hillary Clinton and both sides agreed that more work was needed.
He said Islamabad had made it clear to Washington that the “negotiating process must be Afghan-owned and Afghan-led”.
The Taliban must not be pressed to abandon Al Qaeda, lay down arms and declare respect for the Afghan constitution before the talks, the US was advised. “We know the Afghan culture, they will never lay down their arms,” he observed.
Pakistan had also spelt out its reservations to the US: it must not be forced into a strategy that the US itself is not going to follow on the other side of the border.
The unambiguous message given to Washington was: an action against the Haqqani network in North Waziristan was not advisable as Pakistan cannot afford to open a new front at this stage.
The official said the talks began on a tense note when public pronouncements by top US officials against Pakistan, including the “ultimatum” given to the country by Hillary Clinton herself during her stay in Kabul were challenged, but the temperature cooled down with the clarifications given by the US Secretary of State.