Pakistan rejected on Thursday the US State Department’s annual assessment that it did not take substantial action against the Afghan Taliban or Haqqani network or limit their ability to threaten US interests in Afghanistan.
“We have taken indiscriminate and all out action against terrorists,” Foreign Office Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria told reporters during his weekly press briefing, while reacting to the US State Department’s annual “Country Reports on Terrorism.”In the report, the US accused Pakistan of providing ‘safe haven’ to terrorists, saying the country had not taken any substantial action against the Haqqani network of Afghan Taliban.The report said while terrorist-related violence declined in Pakistan for the second straight year in 2016, terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) continued to operate, train, organise and fundraise inside the country.The State Department admitted al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan was seriously degraded as a result of Pakistan Army’s continued offensive against the terror group’s presence in North Waziristan, successfully restricting its freedom to operate in the region.