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Pakistan is ground zero for terror threats: Kerry

Washington: Claiming that top Al-Qaeda leaders were plotting their next attack from Pakistan, a key U.S. Senator on Friday said Pakistan had become “ground zero” for terror threat to the United States.

“As America’s second post-9/11 President takes office, a single country has become ground zero for the terrorist threat we face,” John Kerry, Chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in an opinion piece published in The Washington Times.

“The consensus among our intelligence agencies is that top Al-Qaeda leaders are plotting their next attack from Pakistan, where the prevalence of religious extremists and nuclear weapons makes that country the central, crucial front in our struggle to protect America from terrorism.”

Observing that the current situation in Pakistan was worsening, Mr. Kerry wrote: “Pakistan is under enormous pressure from all sides, from tensions with India to a ferocious insurgency in the tribal belt to a financial crisis that threatens the solvency of the Pakistani state.”

“All of this is being held together by a fledgling civilian government not even a year-old. For our sake and theirs, America must do more to help Pakistan,” he argued.

Crucial to this effort would be finding a winning regional strategy that recognised the centrality of Pakistan’s relationships with neighbours such as Afghanistan and India, he said.

Mr. Kerry was recently in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India and had met their top leaders. “The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, has called the border region the ‘site of planning for the next attack’ on the United States,” he said. — PTI

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