Kerry praises Zardari, Gen Kayani

A powerful US Senator Thursday praised the Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari; the Army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani and the ISI head General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, for their willingness to take the Al Qaeda head on and showing signs to transform.

“I have found that President Zardari is very committed to trying to increase the accountability and to move in these directions,” Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the powerful Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, said at a roundtable organized by him at the Capitol Hill.

“I also find that both General Pasha, and General Kayani, are likewise committed,” he said. Kerry, who lost to George W Bush, in 2004 presidential elections, was recently in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“In my conversations with Admiral (Mike) Mullen and with other players, there is a sense of some transformation — of a willingness to engage in some transformation,” Kerry said.

The Pak Army, he said is taking on the bad folks who are numerous including the networks of Hakani and Baitullah Mehsud network, besides the Taliban and al Qaeda in the western part of the country.

“There’s a battle going on in Peshawar now or had been, as you know,” he said, adding these are encouraging efforts.

“I was in Peshawar, which is increasingly more a dangerous place. As we know, the northwest province and Swat are increasingly troubled. so I think there’s an understanding here and a significant effort to try to focus on the kinds of things that you just talked about, but we need to tweak that bill more effectively and I hope that we’re going to be able to do it so that we can put it together to have the kind of accountability you’ve just talked about,” he said.