Analysis: US-Pakistan relations in trouble (AP)

Thursday, May 5, 2011 1:01 AM By dwi

WASHINGTON – Osama containerful Laden's modification has legislature pointing fingers at Pakistan and whatever in the Obama brass expressing thinly disguised exasperation. But it probably won't stingy the breakup of a marriage of lavatory that is maddening to both the U.S and nuclear-armed Pakistan. The deciding would be worse.

The man raid Monday on containerful Laden's comfortable concern unfathomable exclusive Pakistan exposes a stark actuality that bodes ill for the decade-long U.S. strategy to coax greater cooperation from its unregularity counterterrorism associate and bankroll its anaemic leaders: Asiatic officials tolerated or helped the biggest-ever mass murderer of Americans or were so incompetent that he lived for eld correct low their noses.

Shamefaced Asiatic authorities feature it is the latter, but whatever in legislature are already clamouring to cut or eliminate the nearly $1.3 1000000000 in period resource to Pakistan. And the Obama brass haw be tempted to opt for more go-it-alone operations.

Through either complicity or incompetence, Pakistan's unfortunate to do anything patch the al-Qaida intellectual spent up to sextet eld in a conspicuously oversized villa nearby a expeditionary establishment raises dismaying questions.

Asked weekday which account the White House assigns to Pakistan's inaction, spokesman Jay Carney declined to comment.

U.S. officials hit griped for eld most fringe elements of Pakistan's expeditionary and intelligence establishment who've aided the Taleban and another militants using the land as a rear humble to start attacks on dweller and Afghan forces over the abut in Afghanistan. But the polity has been seen as a committed relation against al-Qaida, and thousands of Pakistanis hit died at the hands of containerful Laden's group.

The Obama brass is investigating. Any grounds that points to Asiatic support for containerful Laden or his terrorist network would amp up the pressure in the U.S. to cut off expeditionary and noncombatant resource for President Asif calif Zardari's fragile government.

Neither polity wants that. The U.S. needs Pakistan's resource to fisticuffs containerful Laden's followers and exit from Afghanistan; Zardari's polity fears overthrow from an emboldened Islamist contestant if it loses its dweller backing.

Members of legislature are separated for now on Pakistan, with whatever lawmakers locution the modification proves that Pakistan has been playing a threefold mettlesome every along — supporting U.S. enemies on the theory that it strength digit day need them — and others calling for more U.S. engagement to expand the fisticuffs against terrorism. The current idea seems to be to advise the U.S. plus patch Pakistan's expeditionary strength be more motivated to demonstrate its resolve.

But the tension released by containerful Laden's success couldn't come at a worsened time for U.S.-Pakistani relations. In recent weeks, favourite emotion in Pakistan alcoholic when CIA contractor Raymond solon killed two Pakistanis, on crowning of disagreements over U.S. modulation attacks on Asiatic territory. And meet terminal month, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused Pakistan's military-run wrecker service of course with the Haqqani network, a field Afghan Taleban faction.

The containerful Laden activeness has revealed the movement ground: The Obama brass trusty its relation so little that it exclusive told the polity of the expeditionary onslaught when it was over. And in a evidence Tuesday, the Asiatic polity warned that an "unauthorized direct action cannot be taken as a rule," calling it a "threat to planetary peace and security." It has prefabricated clear that it had null to do with the operation.

"We hit a complicated but vital and essential relation with Pakistan," Carney said. "We don't concord on everything, but their cooperation has been essential in the fisticuffs against al-Qaida."

Pakistan's polity is understandably embarrassed, though it insists that it was ignorant of containerful Laden's whereabouts. The Zardari polity and the Asiatic expeditionary are equalisation a salutation that answers husbandly emotion at detected U.S. high-handedness yet avoids centering likewise greatly on desecrated rule so they don't take that emotion or attain it appear they are courting those aggrieved by containerful Laden's death.

That also could partly vindicate Obama's decision weekday against releasing containerful Laden's modification photos, locution their realistic nature could provoke violence. "There's no need to spike the football," he said in an discourse weekday with CBS' "60 Minutes".

But the problems with Pakistan aren't probable to go away — especially if the U.S. gathers intelligence that more crowning imp suspects much as new al-Qaida No. 1 Ayman al-Zawahri, the Taliban's Mulla Omar or militant Siraj Haqqani are hiding there. U.S. officials said this week they venture that al-Zawahri is in Pakistan, and the others hit long been acknowledged to ingest the land as a port to move U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner advisable the U.S. could carry more unaccompanied operations.

"Al-Qaida hasn't forsaken its aim to move the United States," he said. "This is an ongoing armed conflict, and we believe that the United States has authority low planetary law to ingest obligate to indorse itself when necessary."

Washington has clung to an uneasy, post-9/11 consensus spanning politico and Democratic administrations and Pakistan's transition from dictatorship to military-backed democracy.

Pakistan is an unreliable relation but digit worth holding onto, the intellection goes. No cooperation on conflict the Taleban and al-Qaida is a farther scarier idea than the half-hearted resource Islamabad sometimes appears to offer. Pakistan is key to success the struggle in Afghanistan and transfer dweller soldiers home. Letting the anaemic polity tilt likewise much is objectionable because that could earmark Islamist radicals to intend their hands on Pakistan's thermonuclear weapons.

"That won't modify until the U.S. forces in Afghanistan are gone," said Gilles Dorronsoro, a South Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Pakistan module hit to endeavor a momentous persona brokering a political solution to the hostility in Afghanistan, adaptative the Taleban with President Hamid Karzai's U.S.-backed government, he said. And patch the U.S. succeeded in success containerful Laden on its own, it module sure need Pakistan for forthcoming operations.

Some analysts weren't so sure, seeing in containerful Laden's success the recovery of a lost dweller swagger, the feeling in the United States after 9/11 that al-Qaida's finish was inevitable — with or without Pakistan's help.

"I wouldn't mind if this were seen as a precedent," said justice Markey, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It shows we stingy business."

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EDITOR'S NOTE — politico Klapper covers external affairs for The Associated Press.


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