US leveraging Pakistan aid to know where Osama is

WASHINGTON - The United States is leveraging its aid to Pakistan to make it reveal the whereabouts of Al Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says are known to “some elements” in the government.

“I think elements in the government do. I’ve said that before,” Clinton told Fox News in an interview in Islamabad Monday, when asked if she believed that the Pakistani government knows where bin Laden is.

“Well, we are leveraging it. We are leveraging it,” Clinton responded when asked if the US could not “leverage our money or anything” to get bin Laden, but would not say if the US was getting closer, according to a transcript released by the State Department Wednesday.

“Well, I don’t want to put a proximity or a timeline on it, because, as I said, we have gotten closer because we have been able to kill a number of their trainers, their operational people, their financiers,” she said.

“We’ve been able to do that, so in that sense we have gotten closer. But I won’t be satisfied till we get it done.”

Asked if the Pakistani government had assured her that it was really working to get bin Laden, Clinton said: “Well, the top levels of the government say they don’t know.”

But she believed some elements of the Pakistani government know where bin Laden is because “if there were a terrorist network operating somewhere, even in the most remote place in the United States, some sheriff, some local state policeman, somebody in our collective government would probably know that there was something suspicious going on”.

“So that’s why I assume somebody, somebody in this (Pakistan) government, from top to bottom, does know where bin Laden is. And I’d like to know, too.”

In another interview Sunday, Clinton told NBC: “I do. I do” believe there were elements in the Pakistani government who knew where the Al Qaeda leader was and could get get him if they wanted to.

“I think that there’s a bit of a debate going on within certain elements of the Pakistani government,” she said.

“They don’t know how many fights they can take on at once with the various groups, including Al Qaeda, that have found safe havens.”

But the US “argument is very simple: Look, you’ve got to take on every non-governmental armed force inside your country, because even though you think they won’t bother you today, there’s no guarantee”, Clinton said.

“So we’ve been making that case and I find greater receptivity to it, but we’re still having to really make it strongly.”

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)