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Summary President Obama and Mitt Romney are convinced of Pakistan's importance in the region.
The US President, Barack Obama and his opponent republican candidate, Mitt Romney , during their third and final face-off in Floridas coastal city of Boca Raton on Monday night, discussed Pakistan and Afghanistan, vis-a-vis the ongoing war on terror in the region, in a candid manner.President Obama defended his decision to take a unilateral action for taking out Osama bin Laden Bin Laden in Abottabad on May 2nd last year. If we had asked Pakistan for permission, we wouldn’t have gotten it, he said while adding that it was worth moving heavens and earth to get OBL.Such decisions are not always popular, but I had made promise in 2008 that I will order going after Osama bin Laden wherever we found his whereabouts, he recalled. It may be mentioned here that Pak-US relations took a nosedive after the US action in Abbottabad, which was dubbed as an attack on the soverignty of Pakistan.Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts, said that the happenings in Pakistan would have a major impact on the outcome of war Afghanistan. We cannot walk away from Pakistan because it is an important country with 100 nuclear warheads, he maintained.While mentioning the presence of Haqqani network and Taliban in Pakistan, he said that Pakistan as a failed state will be extremely dangerous for Afghansitan and the US. We should encourage stable government in Pakistan and the US aid should be a tied with certain benchmarks for it, he opined.Explaining his position on Pakistan, Romney disagreed with the notion that it was time for the US to divorce Pakistan. The civilian government in Pakistan is not powerful. Military and ISI are present there.It is technically an ally but is not acting like that right now. Relationship is strained at present but we have to work with people of Pakistan to move towards a more peaceful future, he observed.The presidential hopeful from the Republican party cautioned that Pakistan could become a dangerous place if the terrorists managed to grab nuclear weapons. There are a large number of Taliban inside Pakistan, who will rush back to Afghanistan, he said adding that walk away from the relationship was not an option.Romney also supported the use of drones in the Pakistani terrotory in quite an emphatic manner. Any and all means should be used against terrorists and I support that entirely. We should continue to use it against those who threaten us and our allies, he said but believed that the Obama administration was far more a comprehensive strategy to move the world away from Islamic extremism.In response to Governor Romeys assertions, Presient Obama claimed that many of the objectives of the war in Afghanistan had been achieved. Core leadership of al-Qaeda is decimated in the border region. Now we have started transition process because Afghans are perfectly capable of defending their own country, he remarked.President Obama said that the US was helping the Afghan government and security forces with the capabilities they need and was going to do some nation-building at home in America. He, however, argued that the partnership with governments against extremism had strengthened and the US administration was still on the side of democracy and civil rights.On the Iran-Israel conflict, President Obama made clear that he will stand with Israel if they were attacked. Iran will not get a nuclear weapon in my Presidency. Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism, because uclear Iran a threat to our and Israel’s national security. It will also affect security in the region, he said.He said that the coalition and sanctions against Iran were having an impact but the US was not taking any option off the table. However, we dont want any premature military action, he said while rejecting recent recent reports, about Iran agreeing to the US demand of talks about its nuclear program, as untrue.Mitt Romney said that Iran saw weakness in the current administration and was taking advantage of that. Both candidates also discussed the situation after Arab spring, particularly the atrocities in Syria and agreed that President Bashar-ul-Assad must leave power and hear the voice of his people.President Obama said that bringing Iraq war to an end was a success of his tenure while Libya and Egypt should also be considered successes because these countries were free from tyrinnical rule now. Romney, however, criricized the decision to cut defense budget and said that he would reduce unnecessary spending instead.In response to another question, Obama called China an adversary but also a potential partner, if it followed the rules. We are sending clear message that we’ll be a pacific power, he said while mentioning that the US exports to China had doubled during the last four years. Romney said that their was some progress on differential points with China but they needed to do more.- Contributed by Awais Saleem, Dunya News correspondent in Washington, DC
