US welcomes new visa regime between India and Pakistan

The spokesperson of the US State Department, Victoria Nuland Tuesday has said that the recent initiatives taken by the South Asian neighbours - Pakistan and India - to ease visa restrictions and bridge bilateral differences were encouraging.We strongly support increasing contact at the high level between Pakistan and India, she said. She termed Indian foreign ministers visit to Pakistan as a good omen for the future. We think the trip was a good thing, and we were pleased to see the visa progress that they made, which supports progress that they had made in the past on economic issues. This is very much in line with the Secretary’s New Silk Road vision that the connections in that whole neighborhood will grow stronger so that prosperity will grow for everyone, she remarked.Ms. Nuland believed that both the countries were moving in the right direction for peace and prosperity of the region.Obviously, there’s more work to do, but whenever we see the Indian side, whenever we see the Pakistani side, we offer support for their efforts to talk to each other, because it’s in the interest not only of those two countries but the whole region., she assured.When asked whether Secretary Clinton had spoken with the leaders in India or Pakistan about the recent trip, the spokesperson replied in the affirmative. Well, we certainly knew that they were planning to go. They both had talked to her about this trip, so we were obviously supportive, she maintained.The spokesperson, on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 attacks, also spoke about bilateral cooperation between Pakistan and US and the need to strengthen counter-terrorism efforts. We work hard in our bilateral relationship with Pakistan to maintain a strong focus and a strong effort on terrorism there and to offer our support to Pakistani efforts, she said while recalling that Pakistanis – some 30,000 in the last few years - had been victims of terrorism.She said the relationship was very much on the mend after a period of acrimony. In the context of having reopened the ground lines of communication, we are back in the business of trying to intensify our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan. For example, some of the working groups that the Secretary set up a year ago in October/November when she was in Pakistan, that work that got suspended is coming back online. We’re going to have a couple of those groups meeting, in fact, even this week, she pointed out.So we will continue to make the case, we will continue to offer our support, because we agree with you there is more work to do to counter terrorism inside Pakistan, she opined while hinting that this subject was likely to come up during the recent meetings between the officials of both countries as well.However, an another question about the credibility of an interview that Dr. Shakeel Afridi, sentenced in Pakistan for helping out CIA reach Osama bin laden, had given to an American news channel, Ms. Nuland was non-committal. Well, frankly, we can’t at this point verify the authenticity of the interview, she stressed.If we do find that it’s authentic, though, then the allegations would be extremely concerning. Pakistan obviously has international human rights obligations, including under the Convention Against Torture, and we would expect that the people and the Government of Pakistan would be interested in investigating such claims by Dr. Afridi if, in fact, it turns out that this tape is authentic. But at this point, I can’t verify, she explained.She, however, used the opportunity to once again call for the release of Dr. Afridi. The Secretary has been extremely outspoken on this case for many, many months; has called the sentence unjust, unwarranted; has called for his release. And we continue to do that at all levels, she argued.Ms. Nuland, on another query, was not sure regarding the whereabouts of the injured in the suicide bombing targeting a US consulate vehicle in Peshawar last week. She also refused to disclose if the attack had led to any security changes or thought to temporarily re-locate the Peshawar Consulate staffers to Islamabad.- Contributed by Awais Saleem, Dunya News correspondent in Washington, DC