Chicago, May 21 (ANI): Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, during the NATO Summit, has pressed the United States to help find a "permanent solution" to the ending of U.S. drone strikes.
"The president said Pakistan wanted to find a permanent solution to the drone issue as it not only violated our sovereignty but also inflamed public sentiments," Zardari's spokesman Farhatullah Babar said in a statement after Zardari met with U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton on the sidelines of the summit, reports The Dawn.
The tempo of drone strikes, the centerpiece of U.S. strategy to fight militants based in Pakistan, has increased substantially since President Barack Obama took office in 2009.
Zardari also called for the U.S. to do more to make amends for the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers killed in November in a NATO attack along the Afghanistan border.
Pakistan has demanded a high-level apology for that incident, which the White House has resisted so far.
Zardari also voiced support for efforts to broker a peace deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban, whose leaders are believed to live in Pakistan.
"The president said that Pakistan strongly supports an intra-Afghan and Afghan-led reconciliation process and believes that no military solution alone can find a permanent resolution to the problem of militancy and extremism," Babar said.
The Pakistani leader accepted a last-minute invitation to attend the NATO summit, focused on outlining a NATO path out of the long Afghan war.
Zardari's talks with NATO leaders may be overshadowed by NATO demands that Pakistan reopen ground routes used to supply alliance soldiers in Afghanistan, which were closed after the November border deaths, states the paper.
It is unclear whether a deal reopening those roads will occur during the Summit as U.S. officials had hoped earlier in the week. (ANI)
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