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Pakistan is “no one’s surrogate” in the fight against extremists. “We can do it ourselves,” visiting Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said at the Centre for Foreign Relations and the Middle East Institute here.
He was speaking after meeting with Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama who has raised hackles in Islamabad with his assertive calls for direct strikes against al Qaeda and Taliban militants on Pakistani soil based on “actionable” intelligence.
Gilani said Pakistan wanted better cooperation with the United States on sharing intelligence about militants who move across the porus Pakistani-Afghan border. “We are not able to control them, and you are not able to control them,” he said.
Attacks in recent months against militant leaders in Pakistan’s tribal belt, including a missile strike just hours before President George W Bush met Gilani, are believed to have been conducted by the United States which has 35,000 troops fighting Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan “We are fighting to save the soul of our homeland,” Gilani said.
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