Obama Seeks Close Coordination with Afghan, Pakistani Leaders

05 May 2009

Documents & Texts from America.gov

By Stephen Kaufman
Staff Writer

Washington — The presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan are arriving for meetings with President Obama and other senior U.S. officials to try to develop closer trilateral coordination against terrorism and to address the impact of the global economic crisis in their countries.

State Department acting spokesman Robert Wood said May 4 that he expects the May 6 discussions in Washington between Obama, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan will be “very productive.” Wood said he hopes they will send a signal to people in the region that “their concerns are our concerns and that we have to confront these violent extremists so that they cannot recruit further and do more harm to the region than they've already done.”

The real purpose of the talks, Wood said, is to coordinate activities to deal with “the fundamental problems that Pakistan and Afghanistan face,” citing both terrorism concerns and economic troubles, with the goal of “better deliver[ing] services and government to the peoples of those countries.”

“Now is the time for us to act,” Wood said. “We've been very concerned about how this situation has deteriorated over time. And we think everybody has the same view, with regard to what needs to be done.”

Wood welcomed recent Pakistani military operations against the Taliban as “an indication that they understand the nature of this threat” from violent extremists. He said the Obama administration is encouraging Pakistan to continue taking similar steps. Pakistani forces have been engaging Taliban insurgents in the Buner Valley, which is about 100 kilometers northwest of Islamabad, the capital.

He described the situation in Pakistan as complex, and said the government is fragile because it does not have the resources to meet some of its political and economic challenges. “We in the international community need to do what we can to support Pakistan as it tries to meet these challenges,” he said.

At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters the president wants a strong relationship with both Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as an understanding that “not just the United States faces security concerns.”

“Each individual government has security concerns about extremists in the area, and this is the beginning of a long process to coordinate our strategy,” Gibbs said.

In an April 29 news conference, Obama said the United States wants to respect Pakistan’s national sovereignty, but has “huge national security interests” in making sure the nuclear-armed country is stable and does not fall under the control of violent extremists. (See “News Conference by President Obama on First 100 Days in Office.”)

“I am gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan not because I think that they're immediately going to be overrun and the Taliban would take over in Pakistan; more concerned that the civilian government there right now is very fragile and don't seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services — schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of people. And so as a consequence it is very difficult for them to gain the support and the loyalty of their people,” Obama said.

He said some in Pakistan’s military are beginning to see “that the obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan has been misguided, and that their biggest threat right now comes internally” from militant extremists.

“We want to continue to encourage Pakistan to move in that direction. And we will provide them all the cooperation that we can,” Obama said.

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