US urging Pakistan 'more strongly' to stop protecting terrorists: Nikki Haley

Published June 28, 2018
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks during an address on advancing India-US relations at an event in New Delhi on Thursday. — AFP
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks during an address on advancing India-US relations at an event in New Delhi on Thursday. — AFP

Nikki Haley, the US envoy to the United Nations, said on Thursday her country is urging Pakistan more strongly not to give safe haven to terrorists.

She said Pakistan has been cooperating with the United States, but Washington cannot accept any government protecting terrorists.

“We are communicating this message to Pakistan more strongly than in the past and we hope to see changes,” Haley told members of the Observer Research Foundation, an Indian think tank.

Read: Rupture and betrayal: Are Pak-US relations repairable?

Pakistan's cooperation is seen as key to the success of President Donald Trump's Afghanistan policy. The country is under pressure from Washington and the Afghan government who accused it of offering safe haven to militants blamed for attacks in Afghanistan, a charge Islamabad denies. Pakistan also insists its influence over the Taliban has been exaggerated.

Earlier in the day, Haley undertook an interfaith journey in New Delhi, visiting a Hindu temple, a Sikh shrine, a mosque and a church in old parts of the capital.

Haley, who was born in South Carolina to Sikh immigrants from the northern Indian state of Punjab, rolled breads at the Sikh shrine, a religious way of paying obeisance to Sikh gurus.

After visiting the Jama Masjid, one of India's largest mosques, she interacted with a child sitting outside.

She is on her first visit to India since becoming the US ambassador to the United Nations in 2017. She met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday.

Haley visited India in 2014 when she was governor of South Carolina.

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