US hints tougher stance
3 Nepali soldiers jailed
ISLAMABAD, April 17, (Agencies): US National Security Advisor Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster arrived in Islamabad on Monday on an unannounced visit, a day after he hinted the US could take a tougher stance on Pakistan.
It was the first visit by a top member of President Donald Trump’s administration to the militancy-hit South Asian country, and came after a stop in neighbouring Afghanistan where he suggested Washington may take a stronger line on Islamabad, for years seen as an unreliable US ally.
A statement issued by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s office said McMaster had “assured the Prime Minister that the new administration was committed to strengthening bilateral relations and working with Pakistan, to achieve peace and stability in Afghanistan and in the wider South Asian region.”
McMaster’s visits are being closely watched for clues as to the Trump administration’s future course of action in the region.
US-led NATO troops have been at war in Afghanistan since 2001, after the ousting of the Taleban regime for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden following the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
The US has around 8,400 troops in the country with about another 5,000 from NATO allies, as efforts to negotiate a lasting peace settlement between Kabul and the Taleban have repeatedly fallen through.
Afghanistan routinely accuses Pakistan of providing safe haven to the Afghan Taleban.
“As all of us have hoped for many many years, we have hoped that Pakistani leaders will understand that it is in their interest to go after these groups less selectively than they have in the past and the best way to pursue their interest in Afghanistan and elsewhere is through diplomacy not through the use of proxies that engage in violence,” McMaster said in an interview with Afghanistan’s Tolo News Sunday.
The Pakistani statement added that McMaster’s delegation included Lisa Curtis, who US media have previously reported as his pick as senior director for South and Central Asia.
Earlier, Trump’s national security adviser met Afghan officials in Kabul on Sunday and said the new administration was weighing diplomatic, military and economic responses to its Taleban and Islamic State enemies in Afghanistan.
Interviewed from Afghanistan, McMaster said the United States had a more reliable Afghan partner than before but at the same time had reduced the degree and scope of its effort in that country.
Pakistan police announced Monday they had arrested 22 people after the lynching of a university student accused of blasphemy, but observers said there was little hope authorities would secure convictions.
A large mob attacked journalism student Mashal Khan last Thursday, stripping, beating and shooting him before throwing from the second floor of his hostel at the Abdul Wali Khan university in the conservative northwestern town of Mardan.
The brutality of the attack, recorded on a mobile phone camera, shocked the public and led to widespread condemnation, including from prominent clerics.
Three Nepali soldiers have each been sentenced to 20 years in jail for the killing of a teenage girl, only the second ever conviction linked to crimes committed during the country’s decade-long civil war which ended in 2006. Fifteen-year-old Maina Sunuwar died in army custody in 2004 after being brutally interrogated by the military for alleged links to the Maoist rebels.
“A hearing yesterday issued a verdict of 20 years for three army officers in a case registered by Maina’s mother,” Krishna Adhikari, a court official in Kavre district, near Kathmandu, told AFP on Monday.
Sri Lanka has moved over 400 families to temporary shelters after tonnes of rotting garbage collapsed onto a slum on Friday, killing at least 28 people.
Some 145 homes were destroyed when the 300-foot (90-metre) rubbish mountain came crashing down on Friday afternoon at Kolonnawa on the northeastern edge of Colombo. Police say many more buildings were damaged and could collapse at any time.