Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has insisted that his administration will strike at Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan if it gets actionable intelligence on the group.
Obama had an interview with the correspondent of a news channel travelling with him in Afghanistan which was broadcast by the network on Sunday. "... what I've said is that if we had actionable intelligence against high-value Al Qaeda targets and the Pakistani government was unwilling to go after those targets, that we should," he said. "Now, my hope is that it doesn't come to that. Pakistani government would recognise that if we had Osama bin Laden in our sights, that we should fire or capture..." Obama said making the point that this indeed is the current doctrine.
"I think actually this is current doctrine. There was some dispute when I said this last August. Both the administration and some of my opponents suggested, well, you know, you shouldn't go around saying that. But I don't think there's any doubt that it should be our policy and will continue to be our policy... I don't think there is going to be a change there," he said. "The United States has to take a regional approach to the problem. Just as we can't be myopic and focus only on Iraq, we also can't think that we can solve the security problems here in Afghanistan without engaging the Pakistani government," he said. |