America's Pakistan policy has been like "one step forward and two steps backward", Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today, a day after holding the US responsible for the current mess in that country.
Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Clinton said it was not only the US decision to walk out of the country after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, but also the successive Administration's support to the military dictators, including General Pervez Musharraf, has resulted in the current messy situation in Pakistan.
American policy towards Pakistan has been quite uneven, Clinton said in response to a question from Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator John Kerry.
"It's kind of a, you know, one step forward, two steps back," she said.
"One of the greatest state dinners ever given was for one of the Pakistani military dictators at Mount Vernon under President Kennedy. Our relationship has ebbed and flowed. It's gone up and down," Clinton said.
"I think it is fair to say that many of the problems we are dealing with today in that region are a direct result of American policy and funding during the 1980s and our decision after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall to basically walk away, and our inconsistent approaches toward Pakistan and Afghanistan in the years following, and then our big bet on another military dictator -- with Musharraf in the last years," Clinton said.
{{/usCountry}}"I think it is fair to say that many of the problems we are dealing with today in that region are a direct result of American policy and funding during the 1980s and our decision after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall to basically walk away, and our inconsistent approaches toward Pakistan and Afghanistan in the years following, and then our big bet on another military dictator -- with Musharraf in the last years," Clinton said.
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