Pakistan must boost anti-terror fight

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday demanded that Pakistan step up the fight against terrorists within its borders, delivering a blunt message that Pakistanis "must be part of the solution" to the ongoing conflict in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Using unusually stern language, Clinton said while visiting the Afghan capital of Kabul that the Obama administration expects the Pakistani government, military and intelligence services to "take the lead" in not only fighting insurgents based in Pakistan but also in encouraging Afghan militants to reconcile with Afghan society.
"We intend to push Pakistan very hard," Clinton told a joint news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Clinton will travel to Pakistan later yesterday to deliver the message wrapped in a new formula called "fight, talk, build" that aims to kill unrepentant insurgents, convince those willing to accept certain principles to make peace, and rehabilitate Afghanistan and integrate it back into the region.
"Our message (to Pakistan) is very clear," she said. "We're going to be fighting, we are going to be talking and we are going to be building ... and they can either be helping or hindering, but we are not going to stop."
Clinton, who will be leading an extraordinarily high-level US delegation to Islamabad to make that case, said it was imperative for the US, Afghanistan and Pakistan to cooperate. But she said Pakistan bears much of the responsibility.
"We must send a clear, unequivocal message to the government and people of Pakistan that they must be part of the solution, and that means ridding their own country of terrorists who kill their own people and who cross the border to kill people in Afghanistan," she said.
The US sees a political settlement with the Taliban as key to ending the war and is pushing Karzai to lead and expand a reconciliation drive.