United States Army General Lieutenant General Austin Miller has said that he considers Pakistan as a part of resolution of Afghanistan issue. Responding to the questions during Senate Armed Services Committee meeting on Tuesday, Miller said that Pakistan has an important role in not only diplomatic matters but for security purpose as well, Bloomberg reported.
Miller said Pakistan has made "many sacrifices" and "its security forces have fought bravely," but "we have not yet seen these counterterrorism efforts against anti-Pakistan militants translate into definitive actions against Afghan Taliban or Haqqani leaders residing in Pakistan."
Trump has been equally vocal in the past about Pakistan, saying in August that "we can no longer be silent about Pakistan's safe havens for terrorist organizations, the Taliban and other groups that pose a threat to the region."
A United States Army general has expressed dissatisfaction with Pakistan's counter-terrorism efforts, calling the country's actions "contradictory".
Lieutenant General Austin Miller, US President Donald Trump's nominee to lead allied forces in the 17-year-old Afghan war, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that the biggest challenge to stabilising Afghanistan remains the militant sanctuaries in Pakistan.
"We should have high expectations that they [Pakistan] are part of the solution, not just diplomatically but from a security standpoint as well," he said, as reported by Bloomberg.
The 57-year old military veteran, who as a captain led a ground assault during the October 1993 "Black Hawk Down" operation in Mogadishu, Somalia, is now head of the Joint Special Operations Command, the unit of elite US commando forces conducting counter terror operations in Afghanistan.
He has been tasked with executing the Trump-backed Pentagon strategy that abandons any public timeline for withdrawing about 14,000 US troops and assigns them to work more closely to train and assist Afghan troops.
Trump has, in the past, also accused Pakistan of harbouring "agents of chaos" and providing safe havens to militant groups waging an insurgency against a US-backed government in Kabul.