Pakistan to US: Don’t scapegoat us for your failures

PESHAWAR (Pajhwok): The Trump administration and the US military cannot make Pakistan, says the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad.

A spokesman for te Foreign Office rejected remarks from US Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford that the Inter-Services Intelligence had connections with terrorist groups.

Gen. Dunford’s statement was baseless, and an attempt to shift the blame to Pakistan, Nafees Zakaria told a regular media briefing on Thursday.  He also recalled former US secretary of state Hillar Clinton's statement.

“The Taliban we are fighting today, we (the US) funded 20 years ago, to beat the Soviet Union…We abandoned Pakistan and they had to deal with these elements (Taliban),” he quoted Clinton as saying.

Also present at the briefing, military spokesman Maj. Gen Asif Ghafoor said: “Having links is different from supporting. Name any intelligence agency which does not have links. Links can be positive, and (Dunford) did not say there was support (from the ISI).”

In response to a query, Zakaria insisted counter-terrorism operations in the country were without discrimination and it had succeeded in erasing the footprint of terrorists on Pakistan's soil.

“There are no safe havens in Pakistan. The sanctuaries people talk about are located in the ungoverned spaces of Afghanistan. Pakistan has made clear it should not be scapegoated for failures in Afghanistan,” the spokesman remarked.

“We have serious concerns about the growing presence of Daesh in Afghanistan. Its expansion has also raised concerns among other countries in this region and the need to address this menace”, he said.

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