Pakistan must co-operate with NATO, Peter MacKay says
Pakistan can't co-ordinate with the Taliban if the country's government expects Canada and other allies to continue working in the region, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Wednesday.
Addressing a leaked NATO report that says the alliance believes Pakistan is still supporting the Taliban, MacKay dismissed the part of the report that said the insurgents' morale is high.
He said it's not a new concern for Canada that Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, is working with the Taliban.
"We’ve always been very clear in our messaging and in our insistence that Pakistan not co-operate at any level with the Taliban. And that has been a frustrated effort," MacKay said.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/02/01/pol-mackay-pakistan-afghanistan-nato.html
Feb 1, 2012 5:23 PM ET
The guy is existing in a never never land. His dog misses him!
Pakistan has way more military than Canada. Pakistan has the Bomb.
McKay is a pupet or an idiot or both!
Nato prediction of Taliban victory in Afghanistan is immensely damaging
The leaked Nato report predicting eventual Taliban victory in Afghanistan is immensely damaging. Its potential impact is akin to that of a hand grenade carelessly rolled across the floor of a crowded room. The resulting mayhem, if it explodes, could be both extensive and indiscriminate. Little wonder Nato spokesmen and Pakistan's foreign minister are fervently insisting the report is a dud.
Even if the document is merely a discussion paper, based on raw data compiled from prisoner interrogations, its mere existence gives comfort to the enemy, to use the old phrase. Its headline finding – that the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, will return to power in Afghanistan once foreign forces finally leave in 2014 – will come as no surprise to critics of the war. They have glumly predicted precisely that outcome for some time.
But the fact that senior Americans inside Nato appear to share this view, and that they - or French colleagues keen to justify the recently announced early French withdrawal - have allowed their conclusions to find their way into the hands of the media, has seriously negative implications on a range of fronts.
Politically speaking, the timing could hardly be worse. Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, is due in Brussels on Thursday for the first top-level Nato meeting since Barack Obama unveiled proposals to cut the US troop presence in Europe by half. This would have been enough by itself to ensure an uncomfortable visit. Now Panetta may face a full-blown crisis over the future of Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/01/nato-report-taliban-afghanistan-damaging
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