US reminds Pakistan it's still on notice for Taliban ‘sanctuaries’

Prince William is 1st Royal to visit Israel and West Bank

Prince William will next week become the first member of Britain's royal family ever to pay an official visit to both Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Britain governed the region under a League of Nations mandate for almost three decades until Israel's independence 70 years ago, and is still blamed by both sides for sowing the seeds of a conflict that continues to wrack the region.

Second in line to the British throne, the 36-year-old will arrive Monday without his wife Kate, who in April gave birth to their third child, Prince Louis.

William's visit comes at a particularly sensitive time after US President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as capital of Israel and moved Washington's embassy there, sparking Arab outrage and deadly clashes on Israel's border with Gaza.

Dror Zeigerman, a former Israeli ambassador to London, said the Jewish state has long sought a royal visit. "We asked many times for a visit of Prince Charles or the Queen and we were refused," he told AFP. "I assume that it's not the queen or the prince, it's the Foreign Office... I don't know why they changed their mind, maybe it's time."

Official visits by British royals take place at the request of the government, but statements from the prince's household have given little explanation for the timing of next week's trip. Kensington Palace has underlined the "non-political nature of His Royal Highness's role -- in common with all royal visits overseas". A top US official has reminded Pakistan that it is still "on notice" to eliminate terror havens from its territory and said that Washington wants unequivocal cooperation in ending sanctuaries enjoyed by the Taliban on its soil.

"Pakistan is on notice that we expect its unequivocal cooperation ending sanctuaries that the Taliban have enjoyed since the remnants of their toppled regime fled into Pakistan in 2001," said Ambassador Alice Wells, Senior Bureau Official for South and Central Asian Affairs, in a testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday.

Wells told the committee that the current US administration was working with Pakistan to uproot Taliban from its soil.

In this year's New Year Day message, US President Donald Trump had put Islamabad on notice, accusing it of "taking billions and billions of dollars" from Washington while "housing the same terrorists" that it was supposed to fight. Later, he suspended more than two billion dollars of security aid to Pakistan.

Islamabad had rejected the allegations as "unfounded".

In her testimony on "US policy towards Afghanistan", Wells said: "Despite some positive indicators, we have not yet seen Pakistan take the sustained or decisive steps that we would have expected to see 10 months after the announcement of the (Trump administration's) South Asia strategy."