By Arun Kumar
Washington, Dec 4 (IANS) US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has accused Al Qaeda of helping Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan based terrorist outfit blamed for the Mumbai terror attacks last year, to plot attacks in India to provoke a conflict between India and Pakistan.

“Al Qaeda is supportive of Lashkar-e-Taiba… Al Qaeda is providing them with targeting information and helping them in their plotting in India, clearly with the idea of provoking a conflict between India and Pakistan that would destabilise Pakistan,” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday.

Al Qaeda is not only helping LeT blamed for the Mumbai terror attacks that killed 166 people, but was also deeply involved with the Tehreek-e-Taliban in planning attacks against the Pakistani government and people in a bid to destabilise the government, Gates said.

“Al Qaeda provides them with technical information, provides them with operational information and support,” he said, terming the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan as more dangerous than it was a year ago.

Noting that Al Qaeda is very much involved with the Afghan Taliban, Gates said they are supporting all of these different groups in ways that are destabilising not just for Afghanistan but for the entire region.

“Al Qaeda is at the heart of it. And whether or not the terrorists are homegrown, when we trace their roots, they almost all end up back in this border area of Afghanistan and Pakistan, whether they’re from the United States or Somalia or the United Kingdom or elsewhere,” he said.

But the US will not turn its back on Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did when the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan ended in 1989, he asserted, saying he recognises the Pakistani reading of the US-Pakistan alliance.

“With respect to Pakistan: Because of American withdrawal from the region in the early 1990s, followed by a severing of military-to-military relations, many Pakistanis are sceptical that the United States is a reliable, long-term strategic partner,” he said. “We must change that perception.”

Leaders in Pakistan have been shocked in the last year by the inroads the Taliban have made in Pakistan, and the Pakistani army has launched offensives in the Swat Valley and in South Waziristan.

Making progress against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan will encourage Pakistani leaders that the US States intends to stand by its allies, Gates said.

“As we make progress and as they make progress, their incentive to change this approach, to opt strategically to partner with the United States, becomes significantly more powerful.”