'I think we need to give them a little time and space to do that. And that makes all the sense in the world to me,' said Mullen, who visited Pakistan last week with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. -- PHOTO: AP
WASHINGTON - THE head of the US military said on Thursday that Pakistan needed time to come to terms with the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, warning it would be a dangerous mistake to abandon the war partnership.
Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged setbacks in cooperation with Pakistan, which has ordered out much of the US military force that was training forces in counter-insurgency.
But Adm Mullen said Pakistan has been going through 'a great deal of introspection' in the month since US special forces killed the world's most wanted man Osama bin Laden in a secret raid near the country's top military academy.
'I think we need to give them a little time and space to do that. And that makes all the sense in the world to me,' said Mullen, who visited Pakistan last week with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
'I think the worst thing we could do would be cut them off.' Adm Mullen feared a repeat of the instability in the 1990s, when the United States distanced itself from the region after US- and Pakistani-backed Islamic guerrillas drove out Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
If the United States again scaled back involvement, '10 years from now, 20 years from now, we go back and it's much more intense and it's much more dangerous,' he told reporters in Washington. 'We're just not living in a world where we can afford to be un-engaged in a place like this.' -- AFP
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