United States see no decisive change in Pakistan behaviour so far: Alice

United States Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Alice G. Wells has told reporters in Washington that US has not seen decisive and sustained changes yet in Pakistan’s behavior, but certainly US continues to engage with Pakistan over areas where we think they can play a helpful role in changing the calculus of the Taliban.

“I think we’re in the beginning of a process with the Pakistani Government. We have a series of high-level exchanges, Foreign Secretary Janjua will be here in Washington for meetings tomorrow. We’re certainly not walking away from Pakistan. There will be very intensive dialogue through both our military and our civilian channels to discuss how we can work together. I mean, Pakistan has an important role to play in helping to stabilize Afghanistan,” she said.
She further said that Pakistan has a very important role to play in a peace process. She said we believe that Pakistan can certainly help to facilitate talks and to take actions that will put pressure on and encourage the Taliban to move forward towards a politically negotiated settlement. And our engagement with Pakistan is on how we can work together, on how we can address Pakistan’s legitimate concerns and Afghanistan’s stability through a negotiated process as well. Obviously, as Pakistani officials have underscored, they see a variety of issues, whether it’s border management or refugees or terrorism that emanates from ungoverned space in Afghanistan, as important issues, and we would agree that all of these need to be resolved during the course of a reconciliation process.
“We believe that the intensified efforts under the South Asia strategy to put military pressure on the Taliban are important, that these military efforts help shape the conditions for talks and help to underscore that there is no military victory for the Taliban, that ultimately their legitimate grievances will have to be addressed at a negotiating table. We’d like to see them come to this table sooner rather than later,” she said.