'Pak needs to change wastefulness of resources towards India'

Lalit K Jha
Washington, May 9 (PTI) In the aftermath of the death
of Osama bin Laden, Pakistan needs to change a lot of things
including ISI's double dealing and the wastefulness of its
resources towards India, a key US lawmaker has said.
"This as a time for us to be careful, to be
thoughtful, to proceed deliberately but determinedly in order
to lay on the table the things that we know has to change.
The relationship with the ISI, the double-dealing, the
attitude, and frankly wastefulness of resources towards India,
the question of cooperation with respect to Afghanistan,"
Senator John Kerry, told CBS news in an interview.
The death of Osama bin Laden provides enormous
opportunity to reset its relationship with Pakistan he said.
"I see opportunity in all of this to sort of punch a
reset button and frankly serve our interests and theirs much
more effectively," said Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee.
"You know, you have to understand that for a period of
time our interests in Pakistan have not converged. The
Pakistanis have had a different set of interests about India,
a different set of interests about what kind of Afghanistan
they want to see," he noted.
"All of that has to change. And all of that, I
believe, can change. I've had some early conversations with
high level officials of Pakistan. And there's an indication to
me there is an enormous amount of introspection going on and
some very deep evaluating within Pakistan," he said.
Kerry, who is scheduled to travel to Pakistan and
Afghanistan later this month, said Pakistan is important for
the US as it relies on Islamabad for the transfer of its major
supplies to Afghanistan.
"Everybody has to understand that even in the getting
of Osama bin Laden, the Pakistanis were helpful. We have
people on the ground in Pakistan because they allow us to
have them.
We actually worked with them on certain parts of the
intelligence that helped to lead to him, and they have been
extraordinarily cooperative and at some political cost to them
in helping us to take out 16 of the top 20 al Qaeda leaders
with a drone programme that we have in the western part of the
country," he said.
Kerry said the current situation allows US to urge
them to see the ways in which their interests really are not
where they have perceived them to be and hopefully there can
be a readjustment.