US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton prepared yesterday to wrap up a diplomatic mission to Pakistan overshadowed by an outburst against the government over al-Qaeda and a massive bomb attack.
The top US diplomat was scheduled to hold talks in the capital Islamabad with Pashtun leaders, the ethnic group that dominates both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, journalists, police and lawmakers.
After calling for a new start in the often uneasy relationship at round after round of meetings, however, she appeared to lose patience during a face-to-face with senior Pakistani editors and business leaders late on Thursday.
“Al-Qaeda has had safe haven in Pakistan since 2002,” Clinton told senior newspaper editors in the country’s cultural capital, Lahore. “I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to.”
“Maybe that’s the case; maybe they’re not gettable. I don’t know ... As far as we know, they are in Pakistan,” she said.
Meanwhile, the death toll from one of Pakistan’s worst bomb attacks, which tore through a crowded market in Peshawar, rose to 118 yesterday with more bodies plucked from the debris, officials said.
In another attack, militants blew up a high school and a clinic in restive northwest Pakistan yesterday in the latest spike of violence that has left more than 300 people dead this month, officials said.
Clinton will next travel to the Persian Gulf city of Abu Dhabi to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as part of a weekend effort to push both Palestinian and Israeli leaders to resume peace talks, a US official said yesterday.
After her meetings in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, today, Clinton will travel to Israel to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She will be joined by US President Barack Obama’s special Middle East peace envoy, George Mitchell.
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