WASHINGTON – *The United States’ strategy for South Asia has been drawn upbased on the idea of cooperation, not confrontation and that interests ofthe regional countries have been considered, US Defense Secretary JamesMattis said on Saturday. *
Mattis made the remarks at the plenary session of the 2018 Shangri-LaDialogue, Asia’s premier defence summit, in Singapore in response to aquestion asked by a journalist from Pakistan.
“We have put together several strategies and one common theme in ourIndo-Pacific strategy and certainly in what we called South Asia strategy,which was the one within which we contribute to the NATO-led campaign inAfghanistan — a theme that these are not strategies. These are notconfrontational strategies. They are based on the idea of cooperation,”said Mattis.
Mattis said when the US was working on the South Asia strategy, it did notonly look at Afghanistan, but also considered Pakistan and India’slegitimate interests and their role in bringing peace and stability inAfghanistan and in the region.
“We regionalized our strategy in South Asia, so we were not looking atAfghanistan in isolation. And obviously when you look at South Asia, thenPakistan and India were two of the nations we had to consider: theirlegitimate security interest; their potential role in restoring peace in anarea where a war has gone on too long already,” Mattis added.