WASHINGTON
: The United States expects a “serious response” from Pakistan about its spy agency ISI’s ties with terrorist groups, a key American
official has said, amid unrelenting pressure from Washington on Islamabad to forgo its pursuit of “strategic depth” and use of terrorism as a state policy.

Bruce Riedel, President Obama’s principal adviser on South Asia, became the latest US official to speak bluntly about Pakistan’s ties with terrorism in an interview to the German magazine Der Spiegel, following up on the riot act read out to Islamabad in this regard by the civilian-military tag team of Richard Holbrooke and Mike Mullen earlier this week.

Despite Islamabad’s denials and histrionics during the Holbrooke-Mullen visit when confronted about the ISI’s terrorist ties, Riedel did not back down from answering a loaded question by the magazine on the subject. This is how the exchange went:

Spiegel: Currently, there are many reports about how closely the Pakistani secret service ISI is intertwined with terror groups. Does the ISI actually supply the Taliban with ammunition, trucks and recruits?

Riedel: These are serious issues. We are raising them with the Pakistanis. The head of the ISI was here in February. We have put these issues on the table and we expect to see a serious response. In our engagement with Pakistan, I think our watchword must be an old one: trust but verify.

Implicit in the answer was a confirmation about the ISI’s terrorist ties. Asked further what the ISI expects to gain from their influence on these groups, Riedel explained that over the course of the last three decades, “the ISI used these relations to have leverage against India and influence in Afghanistan.”

Riedel’s exposition on the Pakistan-terrorism nexus came amid growing tensions between Washington and Islamabad that is being candidly acknowledged by US officials.

“We have been working with Pakistan as best we can to support them in their efforts to fight extremists…we’re going to continue to do so. Will there be differences of opinion from time to time on how we move forward? Yes. But this is normal in this type of relationship, particularly when you’re dealing with very difficult, thorny issues,” State Department spokesman Robert Wood said on Wednesday, when asked about the tensions.

The Pakistani establishment went into a rage during the visit to Islamabad earlier this week by Af-Pak Special Representative Richard Holbrooke and US Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, after its whining about India did not find any traction. Newspaper editorials bemoaned Washington’s lack of empathy and commentators lamented its lack of confidence in Pakistan.

Islamabad’s main complaint – and excuse for keeping its terrorism option open — was India’s growing influence in Afghanistan which Pakistan found threatening, and lack of progress on resolving the Kashmir issue, which Pakistan attributes to Indian intransigence.

In addition, Pakistani leaders also complained about the drone attacks and the conditions and benchmarks attached to US aid. They wanted drones and helicopters to take on the extremists themselves and foreign assistance on the scale of the Marshall Plan with no strings attached.

From all accounts, the US team made no commitment on any of the Pakistani wish-list. Instead, they were told to abandon their policy of using terrorist groups, a tactic which had begun to consume Pakistan itself besides endangering the world, if they wanted to earn foreign aid and goodwill.

“More and more Pakistanis now recognize that they have created a Frankenstein that threatens the Pakistani state itself. We now need to help them bring this monster under control,” said Riedel.

Riedel also maintained that al-Qaida is trying to destabilize Pakistan and paralyze the government to the point that it becomes a failed state.

“Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Therefore it is in the interest of the international community that the Taliban not reach their goal. In many ways, Pakistan is the harder part of this problem,” he added.

The US official also squarely placed both the al-Qaida and Taliban leadership squarely in Pakistan, a charge that Islamabad is now denying with less and less frequency and conviction.

“After all, the sanctuary for al-Qaida is in Pakistan. The leadership of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, is in Pakistan. That is the more critical territory for them,” Riedel said.