Washington: The United States has expressed its concern over the efforts that Pakistan is making to combat terrorism in the region.
Mark Toner, US State Department Deputy Spokesman, told reporters that America wants to work with both India and Pakistan to tackle terrorism in that region.
“We obviously work closely with India on counterterrorism efforts in the region as we do with Pakistan, and we’ve been very clear publicly and privately about our concerns about Pakistan’s efforts to combat terrorism in the region and the need for it to do so,” Mark Toner said.
“But we need to work effectively with all the countries in the region in order to increase our ability to combat terrorism and to bring stability to the region,” he said in response to a question.
“We certainly recognise that India has felt the scourge of terrorism on several occasions, and our condolences go out to the Indian people who were killed or injured in those terrorist incidents, and we continue to work with India on more effective counterterrorism efforts,” Toner said, bit refrained from disclosing details of those discussions.
“Part of the solution is more effective coordination, and we’ve talked about this on many occasions. Pakistan and India, the United States, Afghanistan – all those countries have to work more closely together,” he said.
“Many of these terrorist groups operate within that environment and all of the governments in the region have to be diligent about taking the fight to these terrorist groups that may, as you said, use safe haven in one country to carry out attacks on another country. That’s part of effectively cordoning off and really choking off these terrorist groups. And we all need to do a better job at it,” Toner said in response to a question.
(With PTI inputs)
