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Hillary Clinton - Source: Reuters -
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Pakistan's government has abdicated to the Taliban in agreeing
to impose Islamic law in the Swat valley and the country now poses
a mortal threat to the world, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
said.
Surging violence across Pakistan and the spread of Taliban
influence through its northwest are reviving concerns about the
stability of the nuclear-armed country, an important US ally vital
to efforts to stabilize neighbouring Afghanistan.
US President Barack Obama, who on March 27 unveiled a new strategy
that seeks to crush al Qaeda and Taliban militants in Afghanistan
and those operating from across the border in Pakistan, meets the
presidents of both countries May 6-7.
The talks illustrate US anxiety that Afghanistan could again become
a haven for al Qaeda militants to launch foreign attacks more than
seven years after US-led forces toppled the Afghan Taliban regime
that sheltered the September 11 attackers.
Speaking to US lawmakers, Clinton said the Pakistani government had
to provide basic services to its people or risk seeing the Taliban,
and other extremists, fill the vacuum.
Under pressure from conservatives, Zardari earlier this month
signed a regulation imposing Islamic law in Swat, a north-western
valley once one of Pakistan's most popular tourist
destinations.
Asked about the matter, Clinton bluntly replied: "I think that the
Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and to
the extremists."
Speaking before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Clinton said,
ominously, that the situation in Pakistan poses a mortal threat to
the security and safety of our country and the world.
Swat was a major tourist spot until 2007, when militants
infiltrated the valley from strongholds on the Afghan border to the
west in support of a radical cleric.
US deploying 21,000 more troops
After inconclusive military offensives and a failed peace
agreement, Pakistani authorities accepted an Islamist demand for
Sharia, or Islamic law, in February.
Teresita Schaffer, a former US diplomat who served in Pakistan and
now heads the South Asia program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies think tank in Washington, said many analysts
share Clinton's assessment.
"There is deep concern in the US government, and elsewhere in this
country, about the implications of the deal in Swat," Schaffer
said.
"It represents a cession of state authority to people who have
been slitting the throats of policemen in the public square."
Schaffer said she did not believe Clinton viewed the Pakistani
state itself as a mortal threat.
Rather, she said Clinton may have been suggesting that events in
the country, where militants are believed to have plotted foreign
attacks and set off a series of domestic suicide bombings in the
last month, threaten other nations.
The White House says the May 6-7 talks between Obama, Karzai and
Zardari will include a three-way meeting.
The talks represent the US president's effort to ease tensions
and forge more cooperation between the two countries.
Kabul has accused Islamabad of not doing enough to stop militants
crossing the border to launch attacks in Afghanistan. However, ties
have improved under Zardari, whose country is facing its own
Islamist insurgency.
Obama has authorized the deployment of 21,000 additional US troops
and hundreds of new diplomatic and other civilian officials to
Afghanistan to try to quell the Taliban insurgency in the south and
the east of that country.
A senior US commander said US and NATO forces were close to
achieving irreversible momentum in their battle with insurgents in
eastern Afghanistan, saying this was partly due to an influx of
some 4,000 US troops to the area this year.
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