US backs talks between Pakistan, India: official

WASHINGTON: The US on Thursday reiterated that it backs any possible Pak-India dialogue but its details have to be determined by the two countries among themselves.

“We value our important relationships with both India and Pakistan,” the US Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller said declaring that “we support direct discussions between India and Pakistan but the pace, scope and character should be determined by those two countries not by us.”

During the daily press briefing, the spokesperson maintained that the US and Pakistan have a shared interest in combating threats to regional security. The US government partners with Pakistan on security through high-level counterterrorism dialogue including several counterterrorism capacity building programmes, the spokesperson said adding, “we support a series of US-Pakistan military to military engagements. We are in regular communication with Pakistani leaders as part of our partnership on CT issues and we will continue to discuss regional security in detail including through our annual counterterrorism dialogue and other bilateral consultations.”

Responding to a question about a report that warns that the US faces a serious terror threat in coming months, he said, “we obviously take counterterrorism matters very seriously. It’s something we work on across the interagency. The full suite of national security and law-enforcement agencies work to detect terrorism plots, disrupt them and hold people accountable for them.”