US to counter propaganda in Pakistan: Hillary

WASHINGTON - The United States will forcefully counter what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls ‘propaganda and misinformation’ being spread against various US actions vis-a-vis Pakistan, including the Kerry-Lugar aid bill.
‘We have adopted a new approach, which is, we do not leave any misstatement or inaccuracy unanswered’, she said when questioned about how Washington planned to counter the growing anti-US sentiments in Pakistan.
Speaking at US Institute of Peace, the US top diplomat said that Obama administration saw the ultimate passage of the $7.5 billion five-year economic assistance package-the Kerry-Lugar Bill-as a ‘great milestone in our relationship’.
She said that the ‘US is hoping to be a good partner for not just the Government of Pakistan, but more importantly, the people of Pakistan’.
Hillary further elaborated: ‘I think we have, as a government, not done a very good job in responding to what you rightly call propaganda, misinformation, even in some instances disinformation, about our motivations and our actions in Pakistan. That became clear to me as we were doing our review, and I saw how often there were stories in the Pakistani media that were totally untrue, but we were not responding as effectively as we need to’.
‘We have, under Judith McHale, our Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, undertaken a very thorough analysis of what better we could do, and we are moving very rapidly to try to fill that void. We have a new team going into Pakistan. A Public Affairs officer may be already there. We have adopted a new approach, which is we do not leave any misstatement or inaccuracy unanswered. It may be that people won’t believe it at first, but we intend to counter a lot of this propaganda with the best weapon we have; namely, the truth. And we’re going to be much more aggressive in interacting with the Pakistani media’, she added.
‘It is unfortunate that there is a lot of mistrust that has built up with respect to the United States. And I think we saw that in some of the reaction on the Kerry-Lugar legislation, which we’d been working on and consulting with the Govt of Pakistan for many, many months. And the ultimate passage of it we saw as a great milestone in our relationship, and we were very concerned when the reaction was so volatile and negative’, she said.