Washington: Even as the US galvanised the international community at a donors meet in Tokyo to have a global commitment of a whooping $5.2 billion aid to Pakistan in next two years, the Obama Administration on Friday conceded that it has the issue of "trust" with Islamabad.
“Trust deficit - look, there's no question that there is a trust - issues of trust. But that's why we're working hard to try to resolve them. There's a commitment on both sides to try to deal with that question,” US State Department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters at his daily press briefing in response to a question on the issue.
Asserting that the Obama Administration would continue to work with Islamabad, Wood said: “I'm not going to say that the issue of trust is going to be resolved overnight. It's not. But it takes action on the part of both governments to try to deal fairly and squarely with a lot of these issues that confront us.”
Top officials of the Obama Administration and the Congressional leaders in the past few weeks have questioned the commitment of Pakistan in particular the army and ISI towards fighting terrorism in the country.
They have said that Islamabad, the ISI in particular, is still seen to be shielding the al-Qaeda and the Taliban terrorists and providing them support against the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.
However, Pakistan claims that US unnecessarily doubts its commitment. It blames that the US has not been a reliable partner for Pakistan, based on the bitter experiences it had in the past, specially the US virtually left Pakistan in lurch after the Soviet Union left Afghanistan.
“So it's something we'll continue to work on. But indeed, there is that issue of trust,” Wood said in response to a follow up question.
“But as I said, the stakes are very high. We need to work with Pakistan on trying to prevent the Taliban from wreaking more havoc, on not only Pakistan but Afghanistan in particular,” Wood added.
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