In a harshly critical assessment of Pakistan's efforts to tackle terrorists, the US has said that Islamabad has made little progress in the past year in battling militants and has "no clear path towards defeating insurgents".
Noting that there was a deterioration of situation in inhospitable Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in northwest Pakistan, a White House report to Congress said that Pakistan lacked the will to "hold" and "build" in areas cleared of militants.
As the US struggled to build its often shaky relationship with Pakistan, the report admitted that progress in US-Pak relationship last year was substantial but "uneven".
The Obama Administration said that the Raymond Davis episode, and temporary suspension of crucial NATO supply route to Afghanistan by Islamabad were indicators of the fragile nature of the US-Pak relationship.
The White House report also said that Pakistan's fight against terrorism was hampered by its perceived threat perceptions against India.
Pakistan, in spite of repeated assurances, is still committing a large elements of its military along its eastern border with India, it said.
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The conclusions in the report on the state of war in Afghanistan and the efforts to defeat the al-Qaeda in Pakistan, 'New York Times' said, amounted to conceding that the efforts to match US President Barack Obama's surge of troops in Afghanistan with a new strategy to squeeze al-Qaeda and Taliban from Pakistan had yielded virtually no results.
The report comes as for more than a year American officials have expressed frustration with the slow pace of Pakistani efforts against the militants. The report issued yesterday was not accompanied by any public statement by Obama.
But the report makes it clear that without pressure from the Pakistani side of the border, it is virtually impossible to wipe out the strongholds of Taliban or al-Qaeda, except through American-led predator strikes from the air.