WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama has said he has sent his special envoy Richard Holbrooke to Islamabad with a message that terrorists who threaten the United States also threaten Pakistan.

In his first prime-time news conference as president, Mr Obama sent forceful message to Pakistan: Washington seeks a closer relationship with Islamabad but there can be no compromise on the issue of terrorism.

“There is no doubt that in the Fata region of Pakistan, in the mountainous regions along the border of Afghanistan, that there are safe havens where terrorists are operating,” he said.

“It’s not acceptable for Pakistan or for us to have folks who, with impunity, will kill innocent men, women and children,” he declared.

President Obama said he had tasked his special envoy, now in the region, “to deliver a message to Pakistan that they are endangered as much as we are by the continuation of those operations”.

But America’s first African-American president also acknowledged that Pakistan’s new government “cares deeply about getting control of the situation”, and that the Pakistanis wanted to be “effective partners” in the anti-terror fight.

“He was trying to strike a balance,” said Prof Marvin Weinbaum, former Pakistan analyst for the US State Department. What he said was “let us not debate that Al Qaeda and Taliban have staked out important positions in Pakistan. But also he indicated that he had confidence in the democratic government.”

Prof Weinbaum felt that Mr Obama’s statement on Pakistan was “not overly harsh” and the message he sent was: “We want to work with Pakistan. We have to work with Pakistan. We must also accept the reality of fact that terrorist safe havens exist and we cannot ignore it.”

Emphasising the need to work with Pakistan, Mr Obama said: “We have to make sure that Pakistan is a stalwart ally with us in battling this terrorist threat.”

But Mr Obama did not mince words in pointing out what he sees as Pakistan’s weakness in the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda militants who, he said, were operating in the border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“And what we haven’t seen is the kind of concerted effort to root out those safe havens that ultimately makes our mission successful,” he said.

The United States, he said, was undertaking a “thorough review” of its policies towards Pakistan and Afghanistan.

President Obama said he had asked his top generals and diplomats to evaluate a regional approach for rooting out terrorism from South Asia.

“We are going to need more effective coordination of our military efforts, with diplomatic efforts, with development efforts, with more effective coordination with our allies in order for us to be successful,” he said.

Ambassador Holbrooke would also tell them that “we’ve got to work in a regional fashion to root out those safe havens,” Mr Obama said.President Obama said that an aloof national government and terrorist groups operating along its border with Pakistan made Afghanistan a challenge.

Afghanistan won’t experience the “relatively peaceful” election that Iraq had recently because the Afghan government “seems very detached from what’s going on in the surrounding community,” he added.

“The bottom line though,” he said, “is this is a situation in which a region served as the base to launch an attack that killed 3,000 Americans.”

US efforts must be smart, effective and consistent to ensure terrorist safe havens along the border no longer existed, he said.

“I do not have yet a timetable for how long that’s going to take,” Mr Obama said. “What I know is I’m not going to allow Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden to operate with impunity, planning attacks on the US homeland.”

Contacts with Iran

President Obama indicated that US diplomatic contacts with Iran could be in the offing. “My expectation is in the coming months we will be looking for openings that could be created where we could start sitting across the table, face to face, with diplomatic overtures that will allow us to move our policy in a new direction.”

He cautioned there had been decades of mistrust, and that things would not change overnight. Mr Obama insisted that Iran continued to back militant groups, seek nuclear weapons and foster instability in the Middle East. “There are going to be a set of objectives that we have in these conversations. But I think there is the possibility at least of a relationship of mutual respect and progress.”