Mullen to Pakistan: Cut Ties to Taliban
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pakistani news channel Wednesday that links between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence military spy agency and the Haqqani faction of the Taliban were continuing to strain relations between the countries.
Adm. Mullen's comments to GEO TV, a private network, signal that the U.S. is not backing down from an increasingly hostile battle with Pakistan over how to combat Islamist militants who operate on the border with Afghanistan.
"We have strong reservations over the relations of elements of the ISI with the Haqqani network," Adm. Mullen said. He termed the U.S.-Pakistan relationship as "complex" and unlikely to be improved overnight. "There is not a magic solution," he said.
Adm. Mullen's two-day visit to Pakistan, which began Wednesday following a trip to Afghanistan, comes after Pakistan threatened earlier this month to reduce the number of Central Intelligence Agency operatives allowed to operate in the country after Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor, shot dead two armed men in January in the Pakistani city of Lahore. Mr. Davis was arrested and only released after the U.S. agreed to pay compensation to the dead men's relatives.
Islamabad also has begun publicly to oppose the CIA's campaign of unmanned drone strikes against militant targets in Pakistan's tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, last month condemned a drone strike that killed more than 40 people, saying that it hit civilians and that the attacks were hurting Pakistan's own war against militants.
U.S. officials say civilian deaths are small. Adm. Mullen's comments about the ISI's continued links with the Haqqani network show how the U.S. is keeping up the pressure on Pakistan to clamp down on militant safe havens as it prepares to begin a gradual draw-down of troops from Afghanistan starting in July.
The Haqqani network is a group based in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region that regularly attacks U.S. forces in Afghanistan—including a December 2009 strike on a CIA base that killed seven of the agency's staff.
