Obama grills Sharif over Mumbai attack trial, LeT; suggests Pak exports terror

WASHINGTON: Any residual doubt that Pakistan is a duplicitous terrorist state was set to rest by the time Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met US President Obama in the White House on Wednesday with leaked US intelligence reports that showed Islamabad acquiesced to Predator strikes on some terrorists targets even as the country's intelligence agencies shielded and helped others. The US president also implicitly accused Pakistan of exporting terrorism. The disclosures relating to drone strikes from 2007 to 2011, when Gen Pervez Musharraf and Asif Ali Zardari were in power, did not stop Sharif from predetermined talking points during his two-hour meeting with the US president that included pleading for a stop to the attacks. "Pakistan and the United States have a strong ongoing counterterrorism cooperation. We have agreed to further strengthen this cooperation. I also brought up the issue of drones in our meeting, emphasizing the need for an end to such strikes,' Sharif said with a straight face, with US president next to him. Obama, who had already spoken by then, ignored the drone issue altogether, but praised Sharif for his commitment in trying to reduce "incidents of terrorism inside of Pakistan's borders, and the degree to which these activities may be exported to other countries." Implicit in the remark was that Pakistan is a terrorism-exporting country, and the drone strikes were a legitimate US response in areas where Islamabad has no control and has ceded sovereignty.