Washington: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that no country including America should make the mistake of moving away from the democratically elected civilian leadership in Pakistan.
"There are certain decisions that are made by different leaders within their government, but it would be a mistake, and it's a mistake that the US has made continuously over the last 63 years, to move away from the democratically elected civilian leadership of Pakistan," Clinton told reporters at a White House news conference.
The goal of the Obama Administration, she said, is to help support that leadership understand how to deliver and show that democracy produces results for people.
"We intend to do that. We deal with the leaders of Pakistan, and we do it in a very whole-of-government approach.
And the strategic dialogue has given us the mechanism to be able to do that," she said.
Clinton argued that there has been progress in Pakistan.
"I think the President and each of us have alluded to some of the signposts of that progress. We still have a lot to do. And the floods were a major challenge to not only the people of Pakistan, but also to our strategy, because we had adopted an approach to change how we were doing aid, to be much more responsive to what the Pakistanis themselves needed and wanted, as opposed to what we thought they should need or want," she said.
"So, I think that we have made progress. We've made progress in certainly our military cooperation, but also our civilian cooperation."
"I think as with any question about, leadership or who's in charge, we deal with the entire government. As the (US) President said, he talks to President Zardari. I deal with the civilian leadership. We also talk to the military leadership. Admiral (Mike) Mullen (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) has developed a very positive, cooperative relationship with (Pak Army Chief) General (Ashfaq Pervez) Kayani. (CIA Chief) Leon Panetta deals regularly with the director general of the ISI, General Pasha," Clinton said.
She said that when the present administration took over from the Bush Administration, it had very little in the way of an understanding with Pakistan that the extremists who threatened the US were allied with those who threatened them, and that, in effect, they were creating a syndicate of Terrorism.
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