'New U.S. President will not change approach towards Osama'

Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington, Oct 31 (PTI) Change of guard at the White
House after November 4 presidential election will not make any
difference to the U.S. military's approach in hunting down al
Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, a senior foreign policy analyst
has said.

"I don’t think that any President of the United States
that has actionable intelligence, where they have Osama bin
Laden in American military’s sights, would not take that
action regardless of where bin Laden was located, whether it’s
in Waziristan or Belgium, remarked Steve Cook of the Council
on Foreign Relations.

"That's likely to remain a policy of the U.S. that bin
Laden is the most wanted man and they are going to ultimately
find him. And when they find him they will serve justice," he
said at a briefing in the Washington Foreign Press Centre.

Cook, however, seemed unable to predict how the next
President will deal with Pakistan.

"I think as far as more broadly, positions on Pakistan,
this is one of the greatest foreign policy challenges for the
next administration, what to do about Pakistan. Quite frankly,
I didn't understand what the Bush administration's policy was
on Pakistan," he said.

"It seems to me that the Bush administration created this
situation in Pakistan by going halves... we either should have
supported Musharraf or we should have supported democratic
change in Pakistan, not halfway on each one," the expert
maintained.

"I would expect that either President is going to take a
fresh, hard look at what our policies are towards Pakistan,
especially this policy of not quite hot pursuit, but going in
after suspected militant hideouts and so on and so forth.

"And to what effect that is having on the stability of
Pakistan itself. There is some evidence to suggest that this
is actually creating more difficulties for the U.S., more
difficulties for the Pakistani government" he added.

"So I would expect that once again whether it is McCain
or Obama, despite the fact that at the core of what Obama
said, which is if they had bin Laden in their sights and he
was in Pakistan, they would take him out. I think that would
probably hold for McCain even though he took a slightly
different position in the debate," Cook observed.

But, he said, there will be a complete review of Pakistan
policy on very short order once the new president takes
office.