Tillerson delivers stern warning to Pakistan
By
Sampath Perera
28 October 2017
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Pakistan on Tuesday, the first high-level visit by a Trump administration official to what was once the principal US ally in South Asia.
Tillerson delivered a stern message to Pakistan’s political and military leaders reiterating the sharp criticism meted out to Islamabad by President Donald Trump in his August announcement of the new US strategy for prevailing in its 16 year-long war in Afghanistan. In that speech, Trump placed Pakistan “on notice” for harbouring terrorist “safe havens” and warned that if it did not bow to US demands and quickly mend it ways Washington would downgrade relations with Islamabad and otherwise take reprisals.
Tillerson’s visit to Islamabad was part of a South Asia tour that saw him also meet with Afghan and Indian leaders. He had two principal objectives. The first to implement the new Afghan war strategy, which aims to gore the Taliban into accepting a Washington-designed “negotiated settlement” that would leave the basic elements of the US-installed neo-colonial regime in Kabul intact.
Tillerson’s second main objective was to further cement the Indo-US military-strategic alliance. This, as he made clear in a speech last week to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), is directed at forcing China, if need be through war, to accept US-hegemony over the Indo-Pacific region. (See: Tillerson calls for “dramatic deepening” of Indo-US alliance.) A key element in Washington’s frustration with Pakistan is that it has responded to the burgeoning Indo-US partnership by expanding its own alliance with Beijing.
In Islamabad, Tillerson told interim Prime Minister…