All bilateral issues to be discussed in Hina-Clinton meet

State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland has said Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar and Secretary Clinton are likely to discuss a full range of bilateral issues in their forthcoming meeting while declining to comment as to how important the issue of Haqqani network will be during these discussions. “Well, I’m not going to rack and stack the issues. They’re all important, but you know that we’ve been very intensively focused on our concerns about the Haqqani network. We’ve been continuing to encourage further squeezing by the Government of Pakistan on the Haqqani network, and we have now made a full designation, as the Secretary announced a week ago”, she said while referring to the designation of Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization. The spokesperson, however, acknowledged that the overall security cooperation was coming back to normal after a tense period. “I’m expecting that the full range of issues we have with Pakistan – bilateral, regional, etc – will be covered, including our continuing effort to get our counterterrorism activities back up and running fully”, she maintained. When asked about Ambassador Grossman’ s recent visit to Pakistan, she said that he covered the full range of issues in his meetings with Pakistani leadership and reported the same to Secretary Clinton. “We’ll try to build on that conversation going forward. Let me just remind that the Secretary and Foreign Minister Khar have had a very strong relationship ever since Foreign Minister Khar took office”, she recalled.On the expectations from the next round of meetings of both dignitaries, she said that this was an effort to revive the relationship. “They have both rolled up their sleeves to try to stabilize and strengthen the relationship, and I think this is a good opportunity, obviously, for them to take stock of where we are and continue to try to move forward”, she stressed. She also declined to offer any details whether there was any plan in the pipeline to revive Pak-US strategic dialogue on the sidelines of the forthcoming UN General Assembly session. When asked about the closure of US Consulates in Pakistan after protests broke out in response to a religiously sensitive video targeting Muslims, she conceded that the US Consulates General in Lahore, Karachi, and Peshawar were closed Tuesday for public services. “But the Embassy in Islamabad is open, although we suspended visa services. Again, we do that to keep crowds down around the mission”, she added. “We did see protests throughout the country, and despite violence in some cities, they have now been dispersed. All of our official American personnel in Pakistan are safe and accounted for. And we are continuing to work with the Government of Pakistan on the security”, the spokesman said adding that they were not concerned about the security as such.