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| US will attack Pak if it has intelligence: Biden | | |
Washington, Jan 26: Sticking to the campaign pledge of US President Barack Obama, his deputy and Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday said the United States would not hesitate to launch attacks inside Pakistan, if it had actionable intelligence against "high-value" al-Qaida targets.
"I can say that the President of the United States said during his campaign and in the debates that if there is an actionable target, of a high-level al Qaida personnel, that he would not hesitate to use action to deal with that," Biden said in an interview to CBS news.
Biden was responding to a question referring to the latest US missile attack inside the tribal regions of Pakistan and if these attacks were approved by Obama or if he would continue with the Bush Administration's policy in this regard.
"It's my understanding that the president, the previous president, gave our US forces and the CIA permission to go across that border, to go after al Qaida if it became necessary on the ground. Does President Obama -- will he continue that policy?" the CBS anchor asked.
"I can't speak to any particular attack. I can't speak to any particular action. It's not appropriate for me to do that," Biden said and then referred to the famous "actionable intelligence" statement made by Obama during campaign days.
He also declined to answer specific question if the Obama Administration would notify Islamabad before any cross-border movement. "I'm not going to respond to that question," he said.
Referring to his recent trip to Pakistan, Biden said: "The good news is that in my last trip -- and I've been to Pakistan many times and that region many times -- there is a great deal more cooperation going on now between the Pakistan military in an area called the FATA, the Federally Administered Territory -- Waziristan, North Waziristan -- all that area we hear about, that is really sort of ungovernable.
"Not sort of, it's been ungovernable for the Pakistani government. That's where the bad guys are hiding. That's where the al Qaida folks are, and some other malcontents."
He said: "And so what we're doing is we're in the process of working with the Pakistanis to help train up their counter-insurgency capability of their military, and we're getting new agreements with them about how to deal with cross-border movements of these folks, so we're making progress."
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