Islamabadsaid Saturday it had sought details from Indiaon the perceived terrorist threat to its general elections.
'We have made a request to the Indian government for intelligence sharing so that all necessary steps could be taken,' Interior Minister Rehman Malik said at a press conference, noting that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had spoken of the threat.
He sharp out that it was for the Indian administration to provide information about the threat. 'We are facing a common enemy,' Geo TV quoted Malik as saying.
'If you give us an opportunity at the centre, I will prove that the 21st century belongs to India just as the 20th century was dominated by western countries,' the veteran leader told the well-attended rally.
'We don't want recurrence of incidents like the Mumbai attacks,' Malik added. Dr.Manmohan Singh's remarks had come during an interaction with women journalists in New Delhi Friday.
Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and U.S. President Barack Obama Thursday held their first joint talks and agreed to build up strategic partnership in all areas, including fighting terrorism.
During the talks, Dr. Manmohan Singh made clear that Pakistan must show total honesty in bringing the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack to book before the talks can be resumed between the two countries.
'We discussed development in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We both agreed that our two countries must work together to counter the forces of terror,' Manmohan Singh replied when asked about his first meeting with President Obama on the sidelines of the G20 summit here.
'We have a international considered partnership with the US. We both have agreed that there are enormous opportunities to strengthen this relationship and to make it more fruitful and strong.'
He described the discussion as 'useful and fruitful' that focused on development of joint relations and how problems of the region can be resolved by interaction between the two countries.
Apart from the global financial condense, the two leaders discussed the entire group of bilateral, regional and global issues, including terrorism, energy security, climate change and the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told his Indian Prime minister Manmohan Singh Wednesday that most of the terrorist attacks in Britain have their beginning in Pakistan.
The British premier made the remarks at the fag-end of a meeting lasting over an hour at his office at 10 Downing Street, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told reporters.
With the situation in Pakistan set to figure in Thursday's summit of the Group of 20 (G20) leaders in London, Brown said the issue of terrorism in Pakistan needs to be dealt with firmly and that 'something needs to be done about it'.
The British premier said he will continue to connect with Pakistani system to work jointly with the international society to confront the problem of terrorism.
'We told him about our experience and our hope of Pakistani administration', said Menon.
Pakistan could get $2.8 billion in military help from the U.S. in addition to the proposed $7.5 billion civilian help package extend over five years, a defense officer has been quoted as saying.
The executive, speaking on condition of secrecy, told the FOX News channel that the extra money would be spent on 'equipping, training, and building infrastructure directly related to counter insurgency operations'.
Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the U.S. Central Command, separately told the channel that the money would be provided under the 'Pakistani Counter-insurgency Capability Fund'.
The money would be disbursed over five years, with $400 million in 2009, $700 million in 2010 and thereafter, $575 million a year between 2011 and 2013.
Quoting unnamed U.S. officials, the channel said that the money would be spent in a way that would not give Pakistan a greater capacity to attack another country, such as India.
Unveiling his AfghanistanPakistan policy Friday, U.S. President Barrack Obama said he would ask Congress to authorize $1.5 billion non-military aid for Pakistan every year for five years to enable it build up its infrastructure and institutions.
At the same time, he warned there would be no 'blank cheque' and that Pakistan would have to live up to its commitment in the war against terror.
US will go after Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan after consulting with Islamabad but does not aim to use combat troops on the ground there, President Barack Obama said in an interview.
"If we have a high-value target within our sights, after consulting with Pakistan, we're going after them," Obama said in an interview broadcast on CBS's "Face the Nation" program.
Asked if that meant putting US troops on the ground in Pakistan, Obama said: "No. Our plan does not change the recognition of Pakistan as a sovereign government. We need to work with them and through them to deal with Al Qaeda. But we have to hold them much more accountable."
Obama made his comments in an interview conducted on Friday, the day he announced a new war strategy for Afghanistan that called for the elimination of Al Qaeda militants he said were plotting attacks on the United States from the rough region along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier.
The plan called for another 4,000 US troops to help train the Afghan army, in addition to the 17,000 combat troops he ordered to Afghanistan ahead of elections in August. Spending on the conflict is expected to rise 60 percent from the current $2 billion per month, officials said.
"What we want to do is to refocus attention on Al-Qaeda," Obama said. "We are going to root out their networks, their bases. We are going to make sure that they cannot attack U.S. citizens, U.S. soil, U.S. interests and our allies' interests around the world," he said.
The approach seeks to make trust and improve ties with an ally that Washington has at times supported and at times ignored but now sees as critical in the fight against the militant group that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, U.S. officials said.
To plant Al Qaeda, Obama said, the United States had to ensure it could not find a base in Afghanistan or Pakistan from which to organize attacks. He said Washington also needed to convince average Pakistanis that the struggle with extremists was not just a U.S. war.
"One of the concerns that we've had building up over the last several years is a notion, I think, among the average Pakistani, that this is somehow America's war and they are not invested," Obama said.
US has made it clear that it would turn clear of the Kashmir issue as it seeks to engage India and other key stakeholders in the region in its new policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
'We don't intend to get mixed up in that issue,' President Barack Obama's National Security Adviser, Gen James Jones, told reporters Friday when asked if the US expected to address issues between India and Pakistan, particularly Kashmir, as part of its new regional come up to.
'But we do intend to help both India and Pakistan build more trust and confidence so that Pakistan can address the issues that it confronts on the western side of the nation,' he said referring to Pakistan's tribal areas which Obama and other US officials have described as terrorist safe havens.
'But no, Kashmir is a unconnected issue,' Jones said. 'But we think that the times are so serious that we need to build the trust and confidence in the region, so that nations can do what they need to do in order to defeat the threat' posed by Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist groups.
'As America does more, we will ask others to join us in doing their part,' he said referring to Obama Administration's plans to 'forge a new contact group for Afghanistan and Pakistan that brings together all who should have a stake in the security of the region.'
The proposed group will include America's NATO allies and other partners, the Central Asian states, Gulf nations, Iran, Russia, India, and China, Jones said noting, 'All have a stake in the promise of lasting peace and security and development in the reign.
India is ringed by turbulent states Like Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Turbulence has percolated through India's porous borders in the form of arms and narcotics to finance insurgents, militants, terrorists and religious fundamentalists.
India remains Pakistan's primary target and operating ground for Islamic fundamentalists and terrorist groups who infiltrate through Jammu&Kashmir, Nepal and Bangladesh and carry out anti-Indian activities with impunity.
Nepal is vulnerable to China's influence. Its extremists have linkages with the People's War Group in India. In its bid to expand its influence, the PWG has carved a corridor ringing the states of Andhra Pradesh-Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh-Orissa-West Bengal-Jharkhand-Bihar.
This endless internal turbulence in India is also inter-linked with external factors. To the north, India shares a 3,440-km long border with China, which can pose the entire spectrum of conventional, nuclear and missile threats. It can also influence and use as proxy India’s neighbors to weigh India down in every possible way.
In short, India's 14,058-km long land frontier is impacted by a perpetually hostile or semi-hostile environment. Indian security stands threatened by demographic assault, arms and drug smuggling, and the safe havens that the insurgents have in India.
Democratic Senator John Kerry has said the United States must do what it can to "sustain the democracy" in Pakistan.
General David Petraeus, the US military commander for the region, and Richard Holbrooke, the special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, will brief lawmakers Thursday on Pakistan's political crisis, Kerry said, , who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Pakistan's leaders are working very, very hard to try to reach an agreement that will bring elements of the government together in unity and allow them to go forward," said Kerry.
Amidst deepening political crisis in Pakistan, the United States has conceded that it is a difficult situation in Pakistan but said that Washington supports freedom of speech and expression.
Arrest and detention of the opposition leaders supporting the march came out, the State Department asserted that it supports freedom of speech, expression and assembly in Pakistan.
State Department's Acting spokesman Robert Wood told media persons at his daily press briefing that the US stand has been that it supports freedom of speech, of expression, and of assembly in Pakistan.
"What we think is important is that the various parties try to resolve their differences within the political system of Pakistan in accordance with its constitution with respect for the rule of law," Wood said.
