Pompeo lands in Pakistan seeking to ‘reset’ ties

ISLAMABAD: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed in Islamabad on Wednesday to meet new Prime Minister Imran Khan, saying he was hoping to “reset the relationship” with Pakistan which has worsened in recent months.

The conciliatory remarks by Pompeo, whose flight touched down just before 1 p.m. (0800 GMT), come days after Washington confirmed plans to cancel $300 million in military aid.

But the former CIA director, mak-

to the wayward ally whose support

was time to “turn the page.”

“So first stop— Pakistan,” he said, speaking on a plane ahead of his trip to South Asia.

“New leader there, wanted to get out there at the beginning of his time in an effort to reset the relationship between the two countries,” he said.

“There are lot of challenges between our two nations, for sure, but we’re hopeful that with the new leadership that we can

begin to work on some of our shared problems together,” added Pompeo, who will be joined by General Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network, which attack

the border between the two countries. - gence agency and other military

arm the Taliban for ideological reasons, and also to counter rising

- - otal in deciding the outcome of the long-running war in Afghanistan. Pompeo suggested that the

to seek better relations with the “Look, I think there is a new

took place long before the prime minister was in power and I hope we can turn the page and begin to make progress. But there are real expectations,” he said.

- with Khan, they had agreed that peace in Afghanistan was a “shared goal.”

Pompeo also held out the possibility the military aid, part of a broader freeze announced in January, could be restored under the right circumstances.

- es when it made sense for the United States because the partnership was in a place where the actions of our two countries made sense to do that,” he

- dent we’ll present to the president the rationale for that.”

Pompeo added he would also meet Pakistan’s powerful army

as well as his own counterpart, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.