US State Department Press Briefing: Future Cooperation with Pakistan
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QUESTION: You mentioned something about three wives and others. Can you just give us more detail about – except these three wives, what else?
MR. TONER: By others I meant –
QUESTION: Who else?
MR. TONER: -- other information, other – I mean, obviously, the Seal Team Six that departed with a large cache of information, but there’s other sources of information that remain there, including the wives, and we believe that that’s valuable. I don’t really want to talk about it more than what I’ve said already.
QUESTION: So before you – I’m sorry. So before you get access or information from these wives, then that means that Pakistani authorities already – they are in their custody. They are getting information from them already, right?
MR. TONER: I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Pakistani authorities about that.
QUESTION: Are they sharing with you this?
MR. TONER: Again, I mean, we – our dialogue continues. I’m not going to talk about what information may or may not have been shared so far.
QUESTION: Mark, what’s your concern about the stability of the government now? Not talking about the military, but the actual civilian government in Pakistan.
MR. TONER: In Pakistan?
QUESTION: Mm-hmm.
MR. TONER: Oh, sorry. Well, look, I mean, I think that last week’s events were significant, and it raised questions among the Pakistani public that the government is now trying to address. And we believe that Pakistan has strengthening democratic institutions and can weather this event.
QUESTION: When you say raising questions, are you saying that the Pakistani public – hello, there’s a whole slew of us back here.
MR. TONER: All right. Yeah.
QUESTION: Is that going to the government’s legitimacy or effectiveness? Elaborate on what you mean by that.
MR. TONER: Well, I mean, elaborate only in the sense that these raised questions that we’ve cited here, that his existence in Pakistan for five years raises questions about what kind of support network he had there. And the Pakistani Government’s going to have to answer those questions, going to have to look at its military and its intelligence communities and try to get answers.
QUESTION: Are you seeing any signs that would indicate that perhaps the Zardari government is in jeopardy of survival?
MR. TONER: Again, I think it was – again, last week was a significant event. The government’s trying to address some of the questions that it raised. But we’ve seen no signs of (inaudible).
QUESTION: Is there any timeline for the questions that you have raised with (inaudible)?
MR. TONER: No. I think the President said in his interview the other night – said that we’re not expecting this to be done quickly.
QUESTION: Can you share with us the copy of the agreement that you signed in 2001 with the Pakistani --
MR. TONER: It’s an interestingly phrased question, Tejinder. I’ll just say that we’re not going to comment on any details of our internal deliberations with Pakistan.
QUESTION: So there --
MR. TONER: I have no comment or no awareness --
QUESTION: So there were (inaudible) –
MR. TONER: -- of any kind of agreement, but we don’t really discuss our internal discussions.
