US: 'Kashmir key to Pakistan's long-term security'

Los Angeles: Spin managers in the Indian and US media are having a decidedly difficult time trying to cope with the flood of bad news coming India's way. Even as they scrambled to camouflage 26/11 mastermind David Coleman Headley's, a.k.a Daood Sayed Gilani, plea bargain as a matter of no great consequence for India, comes the revelation that the Obama administration is by its own confession all set to consider conferring a nuclear deal, similar to the Indo-US one, on arch-proliferator Pakistan.

This, even as the much-hyped Indo-US deal is yet to go the final distance as 'proliferation' concerns related to reprocessing of nuclear fuel are preventing NPT well-wishers in the Obama administration from resolving the issue with India.

But the writing was always on the wall, even before the Obama administration assumed office and the signals were for India to ignore.

Now, the current US ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson has, in a well-timed and brutally frank exposition, clearly outlined current US perceptions about Pakistan as well as the long-term game-plan the Washington establishment has in place for the Indian sub-continent.

In an interview with Pakistan Link, the largest USA-based Pakistani newspaper, ambassador Patterson has said that the Obama Administration is keen to have a "new relationship" with Pakistan that would be "much broader than security'' and aid.

Stating that Pakistan-US ties were "getting better", Patterson said that "fairly significant changes" were in the offing shortly.
The interview was held in Los Angeles.