Focus on internal threat rather than India, US tells Pak

September 26th, 2009 LAHORE - Pakistan Ambassador to the United States Hussain Haqqani has once again raised the issue of India being a threat to the country, The Daily Times reports. In an interview to a private television channel, Haqqani said: "India posed the greatest security threat to Pakistan and the Pakistan Army would play its role in this regard." It is worth mentioning here that, in the recent past, the United States has been pressing Pakistan to focus more on the internal threat posed by the Taliban and other extremist groups based on its soil rather than remain in 'war preparedness' against India.

July 31st, 2009 WASHINGTON - A former American expert believes that the US has attained little success in changing Pakistan's attitude towards India. Former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Teresita Schaffer said while Washington has repeatedly asked Pakistan to focus more on the internal threat posed by the Taliban rather than considering India as a major threat to its interests, it has failed to redirect Islamabad's concern towards the real danger.

July 6th, 2009 WASHINGTON - After months of trying to persuade Islamabad to shift its focus from India, the US now says Pakistan has done "pretty well" in meeting the twin threats from India and the growing threat from insurgency. "They're actually doing pretty well," Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff told CBS channel?s "Face the Nation" programme Sunday when asked how Pakistan?s efforts against the Taliban had picked up at US behest over the last couple of months.

July 6th, 2009 LONDON - Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, who has the backing of top military commanders for his goodwill gestures towards India, has said that the army is united in dealing with the threat emanating from militants and are no more worried about the Indian threat. In Pakistan civil leaders always operate in the shadow of the military, but Zardari appears to have backing of the army high command for some controversial stances, a report in The Telegraph states.

July 4th, 2009 RAWALPINDI - Pakistan Chief of Army Staff , General Ashfaq Kayani has said that the internal threat facing the country was more threatening than the external, and that it needed immediate attention. "While external threats continue to exist, it is the internal threat to Pakistan that needs immediate attention," The Daily Times quoted Kayani, as saying.

May 21st, 2009 WASHINGTON - India and Pakistan have started sharing intelligence inputs regarding Islamic extremists amid continuous persuasion from the United States, a report in a leading US daily said. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) arranged for Pakistan and India to share information on Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the outlawed accused of carrying out the Mumbai 26/11 attacks.

May 5th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Pakistan has asked the United States to tell India to pull back its troops from its eastern border before asking Islamabad to do so. Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, said Obama should first ask India to pull back from the eastern border, and then ask Pakistan to shift focus towards the western Afghan border.

April 30th, 2009 NEW YORK - Under immense pressure from the United States and the international community, Pakistan has decided to shift around 6000 troops from its eastern border with India to the western Afghan border, The New York Times reports. The newspaper, quoted a Pakistani official as confirming the movement of forces to a pre-Mumbai attack position.

April 30th, 2009 WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama says the US is encouraging Pakistan to recognise that its obsession with India as its mortal threat has been misguided and focus on their biggest threat from extremists internally as Washington does not want to see Pakistan ending up as a nuclear-armed militant state. 'On the military side, you're starting to see some recognition just in the last few days that the obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan has been misguided, and that their biggest threat right now comes internally,' Obama said at a prime time news conference Wednesday capping his 100th day in office.

April 25th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Warning that Al Qaeda and Taliban extremists in Pakistan are posing 'an ever more serious threat to Pakistan's very existence,' a top US general has asked Islamabad to turn its focus from India to extremists. Pakistan must reconfigure its military forces to deal with counterinsurgency operations rather than to continue its conventional focus on traditional rival India, Gen.

April 25th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The commander of US forces in the Middle East has claimed that the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group is planning to carry out more attacks similar to one launched on Mumbai in November last year. The Daily Times quoted CENTCOM chief General David Petraeus as telling lawmakers here: "We should observe that the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group that carried out the Mumbai attacks, we think they're trying to do more damage and they're trying to carry out additional attacks." Warning of further attacks, General Petraeus said the US expected "that extremists that are trying to cause that kind of tension and also to take (Pakistan's) focus off of the internal extremist threat would indeed strive to do that." He also said that Pakistan's leaders must recognise that internal extremists and groups such as the Taliban pose the most pressing threat to their country.

April 24th, 2009 US: Pakistan focus should be Taliban, not IndiaWASHINGTON — The United States is urging Pakistan's military to focus more on the Taliban and extremists advancing inside their borders instead of the nation's longtime enemy — India. The top U.S.

April 24th, 2009 US urges Pakistan to focus on Taliban, not IndiaWASHINGTON — The United States is urging Pakistan's military to focus more on the Taliban and extremists advancing inside their borders instead of the nation's longtime enemy — India. The top U.S.

April 23rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - General David Petraeus, architect of the US military surge credited with dramatically reducing violence in Iraq, has said that Pakistan's leaders need to realise that their biggest threat comes from internal extremists, not from neighbouring India. 'It's an intellectually dislocating idea for the institutions of Pakistan,' Petraeus, the leader of US Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, told a forum at the Harvard University Tuesday, referring to the country's military and political establishment.

April 23rd, 2009 LAHORE - The United States is finding convincing Pakistan that the internal threat posed by extremism is a bigger threat to it than India, a "tough sell". Delivering a lecture at the Harvard University, Central Command chief General David Petraeus said Islamabad must change its attitude towards New Delhi.