Tripartite summit: Promises but no concrete accords

WASHINGTON - The much-heralded tripartite summit between the leaders of the United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan ended on Wednesday with promises but no concrete agreements.
While President Barack Obama termed his talks with President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai as "extraordinarily productive", diplomatic observers were looking for some definite results from the three-way meeting.
President Obama told reporters that both men "fully appreciate the seriousness of the threat we face" from Taliban militants. But he did not invite either leader to speak. Moreover, Obama took no questions from journalists and walked away from the podium, with Zardari and Hamid, arm-in-arm, following the American leader.
"The one thing that no one seemed to be talking about publicly is the one thing that, privately, Obama officials acknowledge is the most important: how to get the Pakistani government and army to move the country's troops (including the 11th Infantry Division) from the east, where they are preoccupied with a war with India that most American officials do not think they will have to fight, to the west, where the Islamist insurgents are taking over one town after another", The New York Times said in a dispatch on Thursday.
"Mr Obama gave only passing reference to the problem, which American officials have been privately pressing their Pakistani counterparts to address all week", correspondent Helene Cooper, who covers the White House for the NYT, wrote.
Standing next to Zardari and Karzai - President Obama said simply, "We meet today as three sovereign nations joined by a common goal to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al-Qaeda and its extremist allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their ability to operate in either country in the future".
"Part of the reason for the gap between the public and private diplomacy is that the administration officials do not want to go on the record explicitly with what they are seeking from the two governments, less they be held to account when neither government comes through with promises made behind closed doors", the correspondent went on to say.
"The other reason why no one wants to talk too much publicly about what the United States wants Pakistan to do is that there is a real difference in the way that the two countries view the insurgency in the western part of Pakistan", it said adding that while Americans viewed it as an existential threat to the Pakistani government and the Pakistanis look at things differently.
"This situation has been going on for decades," one Pakistani official explained to the NYT on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity. "These people have always tried to impose Shariah law in the tribal areas".
Pakistan is more concerned, he said, with getting the American government to stop the unmanned predator strikes in the western part of the country, which he characterised as far more damaging to the survivability of the Pakistani government than militants in the Swat valley.
His comments came just after a senior Obama administration official had said that the administration believed the Pakistani government was finally starting to come around to the American way of thinking about the nature of the Islamist's threat to the Pakistani government, further underscoring the disconnect between the two governments, the report said.
Meanwhile, Obama's national security adviser, General Jim Jones, told reporters Thursday that Obama was clear in his support for President Zardari, who had lately come under heavy US criticism. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for example, told Congress last week that Pakistan was "abdicating" to the Taliban extremists.
"The president pledged to do whatever we could, to do what we can as quickly as possible to help the Pakistani government, and said this type of aid would not just be restricted to military", Jones said. He warned that miracles would not happen; therefore it was going to happen rapidly, but hopped that with a common focus they could make strides in the near future.
Noting Pakistan's armed forces offensive in the Swat Valley, a report in the McClatchy group of newspapers says so far the lightly armed frontier corps has done most of the fighting against the Taliban, while some Pakistani army armour and artillery elements are involved in the offensive, there is no evidence of a major army mobilisation, the report citing a defence official as saying.
McClatchy, citing Obama's aides, said they would win at least general pledges from Zardari and Karzai to work together to fight Islamist militants, but they acknowledged that the effort remained embryonic.
On the other hand, Robert Wood, a spokesman of the state department, acknowledged Pakistan's enhanced focus on dealing with the extremists' challenge during daily briefing. "Look, they have been geared for many years to deal with what they perceive to be a threat from India. As I said, this existential threat is coming from within and across the border in Afghanistan".
He said he thought that the leadership of Pakistan understood the problem and was focusing the resources on trying to deal with the extremists, threatening them from within and across the border.
Wood cited Pakistani forces' current operations against militants in the Malakand Division, saying the military action demonstrated that they could not afford to sit back and let the Taliban take the fight to them.
Responding to another question, the spokesman felt that the Swat peace agreement had basically collapsed and stressed the need to take the militants on, as they must be confronted.
In answer to another question, Wood declined to give any details about the discussions the US "has had or will have" with New Delhi over the issue of Indian troops' pullback from its border with Pakistan.
Pakistani and the Pentagon officials have been saying recently that the
Indian troops' withdrawal will be helpful to facilitating Islamabad's dedication of greater resources to fight the militants on the Afghan border.