WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said Islamabad knows that it should act against terrorism and extremism or else it will consume the country. “…but this really comes down to dealing with the problem, and that means that Pakistan has got to do everything that it can to help bring the perpetrators to justice,” she said.
“And then also make sure they know as much as they possibly as they can so that you don’t have a follow-on attack of some kind,” Rice said while talking to a US-based newspaper in an interview.
The Secretary of State also said Pakistan should really take on the issue of terrorism and extremism. “They now know it (terrorism) will consume them if they don’t, but this is a very tough problem for this civilian government,” she said as Islamabad is under intense pressure to act against terrorism in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.
Rice indicated that the fate of Indo-Pak relationship depended on the action Islamabad took against the groups which New Delhi asserts were behind the deadly attacks.
She also noted that India and Pakistan have developed good relations with each other in the past couple of years and they would like to “preserve” them.
“They had no relationship between them (in 2001). We had not terribly deep relations with India or with Pakistan because it was just post-September 11th.
“Now, we have very strong relations with India, really deep relations with India, very good relations with Pakistan. I felt that when I went there I was drawing on a reservoir of trust with the Indians that was quite deep,” she said.
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