Pak not making enough progress in war on terror: Gates

WASHINGTON - Pakistan is not making enough progress in the war against terrorism, even though its commitment to eradicate extremism has significantly increased in the last one year, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said.

“We don’t have combat boots on the ground in Pakistan. What we are seeing is Pakistani government, Pakistani army taking action against some of these safe havens, disrupting them and increasingly coordinating with us in, not in cross-border, but on either-side-of-the-border operations against these groups,” the Dawn quoted Gates, as saying at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council 2010 meeting.

“I think that the Pakistanis taking it on is clearly preferable,” he added.

When asked if the country was doing as much as the US would like them to, Gates responded in negative, but added that the US needed to be patient in this regard.

“We have said all along that they have gotten to where they need to be. We are pretty impatient people…we want everything done yesterday. But, they are doing things that we would have been sceptical they would do even a year, year and a half ago,” he said. (ANI)