Obama warned Pakistan on terrorists’ havens: envoy

NEW DELHI: The Obama administration had given a “very tough” message to Pakistan, asking it to dismantle safe havens of LT, JM and Haqqani Network, said US Ambassador Richard Verma here on Tuesday. 

At the 71st UN General Assembly session last year, Barack Obama took an indirect dig at Pakistan for sponsoring terrorism and being engaged in a proxy war with India. Obama had said nations engaged in “proxy wars” should end them. If not, he warned, the “embers of extremism would continue to burn” causing sufferings to countless human beings and export of extremism overseas, the PTI reported. This was after Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry asked Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to prevent terrorists from using his country’s territory as safe haven.

Verma said the last two years marked the best in the Indo-US relationship when President Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met nine times and over hundred initiatives were undertaken. He said the US condemned repeated infiltrations by Pakistan-backed terrorist groups into India.

He said the US wanted peace in the region and condemned terrorist activities in the Indo-Pak border areas. The US and India had strong Defence Trade and Technology Initiatives (DTTI), he added.