Hillary Clinton on Pakistan

You can’t keep a wild animal in your backyard and expect it to go only after your neighbour, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton warned Pakistan on Friday in unsparing criticism of its toxic policies in the neighbourhood even as the country’s beleaguered President Asif Zardari pleaded with the US for re-engagement after the Pakistani military’s provocations in Afghanistan. Clinton chose a lecture in her former home turf in Little Rock, Arkansas, to launch into one of the most candid appraisals of US-Pakistan ties going back three decades. She agreed that Pakistan had some basis for blaming Washington for its troubles, given how the US had once encouraged “good terrorists”. She, however, added, “That in no way excuses the fact that they (Pakistan) are (now) making a serious, grievous, strategic error supporting these groups (of “bad terrorists”).” “You think that you can keep a wild animal in the backyard and it will only go after your neighbour?” Clinton asked rhetorically, implicitly referring to Pakistan unleashing terrorism in India and Afghanistan, adding, “We have too many stories where that doesn’t turn out like that.” Clinton’s searing remarks came even as Zardari urged the US to talk to, instead of talking at Pakistan, in a long unrepentant Washington Post op-ed lament full of gripes and grievances. “Terrorists who threaten both our country and the US have gained the most from the recent verbal assaults some in America have made against Pakistan,” Zardari claimed, complaining, “We are spoken to instead of being heard. We are being battered by nature and by our friends.”