Clinton in Pakistan to ask 'tough questions'

PAKISTAN: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew into Pakistan on Friday with "tough questions" for the country's leadership nearly a month after US commandos killed Osama bin Laden near Islamabad.

The top US diplomat is to meet Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and the chief of Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the State Department said.

Clinton will be accompanied in the meetings by chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and is expected to demand more cooperation from Pakistan in the fight against Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.

She will also likely push for an investigation into bin Laden's time as a fugitive in Pakistan, and help push for a political solution to the nearly 10-year war against the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Relations between Pakistan and the United States, wary at the best of times, sank to new lows after US Navy SEALs swooped on the Al-Qaeda chief's compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, home to a military academy, on May 2.

Kayani has said any similar raid would prompt a review of military cooperation with the United States and Islamabad asked Washington to reduce the strength of US military personnel to a minimum.

The discovery that the world's most-wanted man was living just a stone's throw from Pakistan's equivalent of West Point raised troubling questions about whether anyone in the Pakistani establishment was protecting him.

Western officials have long accused Pakistan's intelligence services of playing a double game by fighting Islamist militants who pose a domestic threat, but protecting those who fight against American troops in Afghanistan.

"They are now having to look at some very tough questions that they either tried to avoid or which they gave inadequate answers to before," a senior US official told reporters travelling with Clinton.

"They have cooperated. We have always wanted more... But now the sense of urgency is different," the official added.

In Paris on Thursday, Clinton said the United States had "expectations" from Pakistan but stressed that it wanted "long-term" security ties with the country, seen as integral to the war effort in Afghanistan.

Pakistan's leaders were humiliated by the discovery that bin Laden had been living, possibly for years, in Abbottabad and by the American raid, which unfolded without Pakistan being told.

Pakistani troops have been fighting homegrown Taliban for years in its northwest and militant attacks have killed more than 4,400 people across the country since July 2007 in revenge attacks for the government's US alliance.

"We have to see what they're prepared to do... From their perspective they've done a lot," said the US official.

ISLAMABAD, Friday, AFP