POMPEO URGES IMRAN TO ACT AGAINST ‘ALL TERRORISTS’

WASHINGTON: US secretary of state Mike Pompeo on Thursday urged Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to take “decisive action” against “all terrorists”.

Pompeo employed a term used to press Pakistan to act against groups operating from its soil and targeting India and Afghanistan.

Pompeo, in a telephone conversation with Khan, “raised the importance of Pakistan taking decisive action against all terrorists operating in Pakistan”, state department spokesperson Heather Nauert said.

Pompeo also raised with Khan Pakistan’s “vital role in promoting the Afghan peace process”.

Pakistan’s foreign office described the state department’s statement as “factually incorrect” and said there was “no mention at all in the conversation about terrorists operating in Pakistan.”

This was the first high-level interaction the US had with the new dispensation in Islamabad — neither President Donald Trump nor vice president Mike Pence has called Khan yet.

Pompeo will reportedly visit Islamabad en route to India for the inaugural 2+2 meeting in September, but there has been no formal announcement.

Relations between the US and Pakistan have nosedived in recent months and the Trump administration’s decision to suspend nearly $2 billion in security aid and Washington’s lobbying for Islamabad to placed be on an international watch list for terrorist financing pushed ties to a further low.