Gates Stresses the Importance of Ties With Pakistan

Gates Stresses the Importance of Ties With Pakistan

By ELISABETH BUMILLER and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and the nation’s top military officer said on Thursday that it was critical for the United States to maintain ties with Pakistan despite growing anti-Americanism in the Pakistani military and the worst relationship between the two countries in years.

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Robert Gates, U.S. secretary of defense since 2006, is set to leave his position on June 30.

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• Times Topics: Pakistan | Robert M. Gates

Both Mr. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, deflected a question on whether they were concerned that Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who has led the Pakistani Army since 2007, might be in danger of losing his position. Pakistani officials and an American military officer said this week that General Kayani was fighting to survive in the face of anger among top generals and junior officers about the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and that a coup, while unlikely, was not out of the question.
“The long history of the U.S.-Pakistani relationship has had its ebbs and flows,” Mr. Gates said, but then added, “We need each other, and we need each other more than just in the context of Afghanistan.”
Admiral Mullen warned about the perils of abandoning Pakistan, which receives at least $2 billion a year in military aid from the United States. “Were we to walk away, I think it’s a matter of time before the region is that much more dangerous, and there would be a huge pull for us to have to return to protect our national interests,” he said.
The news conference was the last one for Mr. Gates as secretary of defense, a job he has held since 2006 and is to leave on June 30. He said little about the main issue facing him as he exits, the number of American troops to leave Afghanistan next month under a withdrawal schedule ordered by President Obama. Mr. Gates also declined to say that the United States was “winning” the war, despite recent military gains.
“I have learned a few things in four and a half years, and one of them is to try to stay away from loaded words like ‘winning’ and ‘losing,’ ” Mr. Gates said. But he did say that “our military operations are being successful in denying the Taliban control of populated areas, degrading their capabilities and improving the capabilities of the Afghan national security forces.”
Discussing troop numbers for the war in Afghanistan, Mr. Gates and Admiral Mullen confirmed that 800 members of two battalions from the Oklahoma National Guard scheduled for duty in Afghanistan were instead ordered to Kuwait to help guard forces coming home from Iraq. Both officials said the decision should not be viewed as an early, shadow troop reduction.
But they acknowledged that the order diverting the troops to Kuwait could be viewed as anticipating the withdrawal decision by Mr. Obama. “The president has said that we will begin drawing down our forces in July of 2011, based on the conditions on the ground,” Mr. Gates said. “It was pretty clear that these two units were units that would probably be on that list.”
The decision to divert the troops was “so that we didn’t end up putting them someplace and then pulling them right back out again,” Mr. Gates said.
Admiral Mullen stressed that Mr. Obama had made no decision yet on the pace of the reduction. Administration officials said that Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan, met on Thursday with the president.
“They discussed a range of options,” said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. “I think the general has said in the past publicly that this was a question of options, plural, and not option, and that conversation will continue.”
Mr. Gates also announced a senior personnel decision: the nomination of Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert to be the next chief of naval operations. Admiral Greenert now serves as the Navy’s No. 2 officer.
The defense secretary began by joking that he had considered convening the session to “announce that I was firing myself.” GO TO SOURCE..