Pakistan’s foreign minister, at PU, hits U.S. anti-terrorist raids

By David Walter, Special Writer
   In a Wednesday speech at Princeton University, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi condemned anti-terrorist raids into his country by U.S. Special Forces as a betrayal of Pakistan’s territorial integrity and good intentions in the fight against terrorists.
   ”The Pakistani public rightly sees such attacks as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. It hurts us even more when the transgressor is our friend and ally the U.S.,” Mr. Qureshi told a capacity audience at the Woodrow Wilson School. “If there are actions to be taken, these actions will be taken by Pakistan.”
   While Mr. Qureshi acknowledged the presence of al Qaeda and Taliban agents in tribal areas on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, he said that the raids do more harm than good.
   ”We must not undertake any action that hardens the resolve of those already committed to violence or sway the minds of hostile neutrals to join them,” Mr. Qureshi said, arguing that U.S. raids do just that.
   The United States should keep its focus on Afghanistan, he said.
   ”A large segment of the Pakistani public believes that Pakistan is being made a scapegoat for ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) and Afghanistan government failures,” Mr. Qureshi said. “We must be honest to ourselves that the majority of Afghanistan’s problems originate in and must be treated in Afghanistan.”
   Mr. Qureshi’s visit to Princeton comes little more than a week after a suicide attack on the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, killed over 50 people and left many more injured. Mr. Qureshi said that despite disagreements with the U.S. over the raids, Pakistan remains committed to fighting violent extremists.
   ”The struggle against terrorists is the defining struggle of our time,” he said. “Terrorism poses a threat to all of us. It demands a response from all of us.”
   Pakistan has proven that it can confront this threat on its own terms, Mr. Qureshi said.
   After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, “we were able to apprehend or kill hundreds of al Qaeda or Taliban agents,” he said. But Mr. Qureshi did allow that the difficulties of operating in the mountainous Pakistan-Afghanistan border region have led his government to reassess its strategy there.
   ”We are not only fighting the terrorists — we are fighting the terrain as well,” he said. As a result, “force alone will never be sufficient,” in ending the terrorist presence in the area.
   Mr. Qureshi is a member of the Pakistan Peoples Party, which gained parliamentary power in February following the assassination of the party’s leader Benazir Bhutto. Ms. Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, was sworn in as the country’s president earlier this month after Pervez Musharraf resigned under pressure of impeachment.
   He said that the new government planned to use a more innovative, “multi-pronged” strategy to combat terrorism in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
   ”We will engage politically with the moderates — those who are willing to give up arms and accept the writ of the government. We will focus on the economic development of FATA,” he said. “And when required, we will use force.”