The United States feels that there has been much greater “effort and commitment” on the part of Pakistan in the last six months to fight terror but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought to distance Washington from the controversy over India agreeing to delink terror in its discourse with Pakistan, saying that it was not pressuring India to resume dialogue.

Speaking to reporters at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel, one of the targets of the 26/11 terror attacks and where she is staying during her visit to Mumbai, the former US First Lady said terrorist organisations targeting India needed to be “defeated and dismantled”. “Our government is committed in the fight against terrorism,” Clinton said after a breakfast meeting with Indian business leaders at the same hotel.

The “bottomline”, she said, is that Washington expects everyone with whom it has relations and whom it saw as being a part of the future world they were building together, to take “strong action” to prevent terrorism from taking root on their soil and make sure that terrorists were not trained and deployed.

Some analysts and diplomatic observers believe that the India-Pak joint statement after talks in Sharm el-Sheikh between Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Yousuf Raza Gilani seemed to be influenced by Washington as it gives some wiggle room to Pakistan and also accommodates some of its concerns.

But in an attempt to indicate that the US was not playing a behind-the-scenes role in the engagement between the South Asian neighbours, Clinton said that India was a sovereign nation fully capable of protecting its own interests, rights and security of its people. “I will not speak for the Indian government,” she said, adding that Washington was supportive of the steps taken by India to fight terrorism. Any decision on India and Pakistan talking to explore the very difficult issues were “between them” and up to their governments, she said. “The United States would be very supportive of steps that the governments take,” Clinton stressed that Washington was not in any way involved in or promoting any particular position.

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