US not convinced Dr Afridi had links with militants

“The US administration does not believe that the charges against Dr Shakeel Afridi, linking him to a militant group Lashkar-i-Islam, are valid,” a senior US official said while talking to Dunya News here Wednesday.“This is a new story that has come out and we will seek further clarity from Pakistan in this case and the charges against Dr Afridi,” the official stated without going in further details.Dr Afridi is accused of running a fake vaccination campaign in Abbottabad on the directions of CIA to help them obtain the DNA of Osama Bin Laden and his family members prior to the May 2 raid last year. However, it is believed, that even he was kept unaware of Osama Bin Laden’s presence in that compound.He was convicted to 33 years in prison under the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) last week. It was widely believed that he has been charged of treason, but the five-page judgment released by the tribal court reveals that he has been awarded sentence for allegedly conspiring with a militant group, Lashkar-i-Islam, operating in Khyber agency.The deputy spokesperson of the US State Department, Mark Toner, also confirmed during a briefing Wednesday that the US was “seeking clarity from Pakistan on charges of links with militants against Dr. Afridi.”He said that the family of Dr Afridi, who had held a press conference in Pakistan raising concerns over his safety, had not contacted US authorities as yet. The US officials, though, continued to raise this issue in meetings with the Pakistani officials, he stressed.When asked whether the US was seeking this clarity through the Pakistani embassy in Washington, DC or directly from Islamabad, he said “I believe, both”, while refusing to comment further on the US concerns over the validity of charges against the convict, Dr Afridi.Toner also had nothing new to report on the negotiations underway in Islamabad between a US interagency team and the Pakistani officials over reopening of ground supply routes for NATO troops in Afghanistan.“Discussions with Pakistan on ground routes are ongoing, but there is nothing new at this stage. We are making diligent progress in negotiations with Pakistan but cant comment on diplomatic conversations,” he remarked.He declined to comment when asked whether the State Department agreed with the assessment of Secretary Defense, Leon Panetta that Pakistan was being unreasonable in asking for higher new tariff. Panetta in an interview over the weekend, had said that the US will not be gouged by Pakistan.“We have other ways to ensure supplies for troops but hope that ground routes from Pakistan will be reopened soon,” he said while declining to respond to a question whether the US had put any timeline on the negotiations underway on this issue.He believed that reopening of these routes would be an important demonstration of Pakistans commitment for peace in Afghanistan. “In the brief exchange of president Obama with President Zardari in Chicago, he discussed what kind of role Pakistan wanted to play in the region,” he recalled.The spokesman asserted that the US administration wanted to see Pakistan as a stable and democratic country that could help in the peace and stability in the region as a whole, including Afghanistan.In a separate briefing, Pentagon spokesperson, Navy Capt. John Kirby said that the ground supply routes were still closed but “talks with Pakistan continue on reopening of ground lines of communication (GLOCs)”. He believed Pentagon was pleased with the level of dialogue about this issue, but were still working to resolve it.- Contributed by Awais Saleem, Dunya News correspondent in Washington, DC