West must keep Pakistan ties: NATO chief

The west must continue to co-operate closely with Pakistan despite US claims that Pakistan’s intelligence agency is assisting insurgents fighting allied troops in Afghanistan, NATO’s secretary-general has said.Anders Fogh Rasmussen declined to say whether he agreed with claims by Admiral Mike Mullen, the US military’s recently-retired top officer, that Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence directorate supported attacks on US and NATO facilities by Pakistan-based Haqqani militants.But he told the Financial Times that regardless of possible links, “I don’t think there are many alternatives” to working with the Pakistani military and government leadership to convince them to clamp down on the Haqqani operation.“Whatever might be the links between the Haqqani network and authorities in Pakistan, the bottom line remains the same,” Mr Rasmussen said in an interview.“Pakistan must deal with it and make sure terrorists don’t have safe havens in Pakistan, and we need a close partnership and a positive partnership with Pakistan.”US expectations of Pakistani forces moving against the Haqqani network based in North Waziristan are low.The Pakistani army insists that existing efforts to clear militants along the Afghan border have left it “too stretched” to launch new, and domestically unpopular, operations. The country’s civilian and military leaders say that the US has failed to understand the complexity of the alliances and threats in the tribal areas along the border.The Haqqani network is viewed by many analysts as a key proxy for Pakistan in its bid to retain control of territory in the Pashtun-belt of southern Afghanistan. Diplomats in Islamabad describe Pakistan’s tolerance of militant groups in the border region as “hedging” over the future of Afghanistan once US troops withdraw in 2014.“Pakistan cannot be sidelined from any settlement on Afghanistan,” Ahmed Mukhtar, Pakistan’s defence minister, told the FT.“Pakistan and Afghanistan must co-operate to stabilise the region, otherwise peace will remain a distant prospect. Nobody can ignore Pakistan’s centrality to a successful end to the Afghan campaign.”Mr Rasmussen denied that the new hardline stance taken by the Obama administration risked up-ending his push to continue close co-operation with Islamabad.He said he still considered Pakistan “a partner” in NATO’s Afghan campaign and believed Pakistan’s leadership could be incentivised to take a more aggressive stance towards the Haqqanis and affiliated extremist groups.“I don’t believe we have other ways to deal with this than continue to work with the Pakistanis and really make sure they understand we have a common interest,” he said.