ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari congratulated his US counterpart Barack Obama on his re-election yesterday, saying he was confident their countries’ relations would “continue to prosper”.
Pakistan is a key ally in the US “war on terror” but anti-American feeling runs deep in the nuclear-armed nation and ties with Washington over the past two years have been fraught.
The fractious friends lurched from crisis to crisis in 2011, first over a CIA contractor who shot dead two people in the eastern city of Lahore, then over the US raid that found and killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, and finally over botched air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani border guards.
“President Asif Ali Zardari has warmly felicitated President Barack Obama on his reelection as the President of the United States of America,” a statement from Zardari’s office said.
“The President expressed the hope that the relationship between Pakistan and the US would continue to prosper during President Obama’s new term in office.”
Islamabad and Washington have been seeking to improve their relationship in recent months, with Pakistan reopening the Nato supply route to Afghanistan which it closed for six months in protest at the US air raid.
“The President expressed the hope that the relationship between Pakistan and the US would continue to prosper during President Obama’s new term in office,” the Zardari statement said.
But sticking points remain, notably the issue of missile attacks by unmanned US aircraft in Pakistan’s semi-autonomous northwestern tribal region, which Washington regards as the main hub of Taliban and Al Qaeda militants plotting attacks on the West and in Afghanistan.
Drone strikes are hugely unpopular in Pakistan, where they are condemned as a breach of sovereignty and counterproductive, but US officials say they are an important and effective tool in the battle against extremists.
The Al Qaeda linked Haqqani network in the North Waziristan tribal area, blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan, is another thorny issue.
Washington has long demanded that Pakistan take action against the Haqqanis, whom the United States accused of attacking the US embassy in Kabul last year and acting like a “veritable arm” of Pakistani intelligence.
AFP
