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Summary
US President Barack Obama said Tuesday he believed Pakistan was making progress in fighting extremism as he tried to assuage India's concerns about its historic rival. Pakistan has an enormously important role in the security of the region by making sure that the extremist organizations are dealt with effectively, Obama said. And we've seen some progress, he said. He was speaking at a joint news conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has called for greater pressure on Pakistan to rein in extremists one year after the grisly assault on Mumbai that left 166 dead. Obama pointed to Pakistan's offensive against Taliban insurgents in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan as a sign of progress. Obama was quizzed about the tense relationship between India and Pakistan and said it was not the role of the United States to intervene and solve such problems. Obama said the US, though, should do what it can to ensure that Pakistan and India both feel secure so they can focus on developing their own countries for their own people.Obama promised he would unveil his decision shortly on whether to escalate the war in Afghanistan and pledged: It is my intention to finish the job. I will be making an announcement to the American people about how we intend to move forward. I will be doing so shortly. It is in our strategic interests, in our national security interest, to make sure that Al-Qaeda and its extremist allies cannot operate effectively in those areas. We are going to dismantle and degrade their capabilities and ultimately dismantle and destroy their networks. Singh has called on Pakistan to clamp down on extremist groups that planned the Mumbai attacks but resisted calls last year to threaten military retaliation against the fellow nuclear power. Obama said he and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had agreed to work even closer on the sharing of information between law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Singh promised increased cooperation with Washington to battle terrorism.On security, Obama said the US and India are natural allies: We both recognize that our core goal is to achieve peace and security for all peoples in the region, not just one country or the other. Obama and Manmohan said they would finalize a landmark nuclear cooperation agreement that ends New Delhi's pariah status as a nuclear power. I reaffirmed to the prime minister my administration's commitment to fully implement the US-India civil nuclear agreement which increases American exports and creates jobs in both countries, Obama told a joint news conference. Singh said he was confident that Obama would operationalize the nuclear deal as early as possible. Some lawmakers from Obama's Democratic Party opposed the treaty in Congress, saying it sent a bad message to nations such as Iran that are feared to be seeking nuclear weapons. The two leaders glossed over a dispute over commitments to reduce greenhouse gases in advance of the next month's climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, but Obama said they had moved a step closer to a successful outcome. Obama said he would travel to India next year as.
