US has made concerns about LeT clear to Pakistan

Washington, June 27 (IANS) A day after adding Lashkar-e-Taeba's (LeT) front organisations to its list of foreign terror organisations, the US says it has made very clear its concern about the Pakistan-based outfit.

"The threat from the Taliban and other terrorist groups is not new. It doesn't just threaten the Pakistanis; it threatens Afghanistan and India, and has the United States in the past as well," State department spokesperson Marie Harf told reporters Thursday.

"Look, we've worked very closely with the Pakistanis," she said when asked about Pakistan's reported assertion that it was under no obligation to act on the US designation as it was not a UN sanction.

The US has also shared information from its assessment about the May 23 attack on the Indian consulate in Herat with the Indian government, Harf said.

"We've been very clear about the threat LeT poses," she said but declined "to get into a tit-for-tat with my counterpart in Pakistan without seeing them."

"Obviously, we've made very clear our concern about LeT," Harf said. "That's why we put them on our designation list; that's why we try to cut off funding and support to them."

While designations on LeT have been in place for years, and what the US did was to include "additional aliases to make sure that we can increasingly cut off the funding and support to LeT through other aliases that they use for their activities as well," she said.

The current operations Pakistan is undertaking in North Waziristan were an entirely Pakistani-led and executed operation, Harf said.

"Obviously, we have long supported their efforts to extend the writ of government throughout their country and to increase internal stability and security," she said.

"But again, these are - these current operations are an entire Pakistani-led event."

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])