Pakistan's government must be given time to deal with the troubled situation on its border with Afghanistan, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday, two days after a US air strike killed 11 Pakistani soldiers in the region.
"I think it's important to give this new civilian government in Pakistan time to inform itself about the situation in the north-west, looking clearly at seeing if there is a way to negotiate arrangements with some of the tribes, and I think we just have to give them some space," Gates told Nato counterparts in Brussels.
But "we have some scepticism" whether some of the agreements between the Islamabad government and tribal leaders on the Afghan border "will work out," he added. Gates praised an Italian decision to lift restrictions on the use of its 2,350 troops in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, saying that he hoped that this would "set an example" to other Nato members to do the same.