Obama wants stability in nuclear Pakistan

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama has said his administration wants to make sure that Afghanistan is not a safe haven for al-Qaeda and that the insurgency-hit country does not destabilise its nuclear-armed neighbour Pakistan.

Obama told NBC in an interview aired on Monday that his administration is for having clear objectives in Afghanistan and wants to fix the drift that occurred there over the last two years. “We are not gonna be able to rebuild Afghanistan into a Jeffersonian democracy.””What we can do is make sure that Afghanistan is not a safe haven for al-Qaeda. What we can do is make sure that it is not destabilising neighboring Pakistan, which has “nuclear weapons.

“The key is ... we’ve got to have a clear objective. And there’s been drift in Afghanistan over the last couple of years. And that’s something that we intend to fix this year,” he said in response to questions about the US objectives in Afghanistan in view of historical challenges and amid suggestions of additional US troops deployment in that country.

Obama also said he worried that detainees freed from the US military prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, might resume attacks on the United States.But he told NBC News that closure of the prison was a matter of upholding US values and law, and that a failure to do so would ultimately make Americans less secure.

“Can we guarantee that they’re not going to try to participate in another attack? No,” Obama said. “But what I can guarantee is that if we don’t uphold our Constitution and our values, that over time that will make us less safe. And that will be a recruitment tool for organizations like al-Qaeda.”

Some 250 terrorism suspects are being held at Guantanamo, many of them detained for years without charge and some subjected to interrogation that human rights groups say amounted to torture.

There also are fears some may return to their attacks against the United States. Several of the detainees released by the Bush administration again became active in anti-US militant groups. “Is it going to be easy?”

Obama asked in the interview. “No, because we’ve got a couple hundred of hard-core militants that, unfortunately, because of ... some problems that we had previously in gathering evidence, we may not be able to try in ordinary courts but we don’t want to release.”

But he expressed confidence that the administration would ultimately find a solution balancing security and US legal values. “I have to make the very best judgments I can make in terms of what’s going to keep the American people safe and ... what’s going to uphold our Constitution and our traditions of due process,” Obama said. “And what I’m convinced of is — we can balance those interests in a way that makes all of us proud but also assures that we’re not attacked.”