Nothing to see here, folks, move along: Official response to leaked NATO report,"The State of the Taliban"

Tejinder Singh – AHN News Correspondent
via Gant News Daily
February 2, 2012

Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – The United States’ top diplomat on Wednesday tiptoed around a controversial NATO report on the Taliban, leaked portions of which accuse Islamabad of having links with the organization harboring Al Qaeda.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told journalists there is nothing new in the new classified report by NATO which was earlier dumped by Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar as “old wine in even older bottles.”

Appearing at a press conference with visiting Singapore Foreign Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam, Clinton said, “I think that there have already been comments that there’s nothing new in what has been released, but I’m not going to go into it in any depth.”

Earlier in the day, Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. John Kirby also avoided delving into the details of the classified report, saying there is nothing new about information concerning links between some elements of the Pakistani government’s intelligence agency ISI and the Taliban.

Asked to comment on details about what elements of the ISI have links with the Taliban, Kirby sidestepped the question, saying, “We have made it clear already that Pakistan needs to act against safe havens. We would like ties between some elements of ISI and Taliban to be cut off.”

Kirby stressed that the classified NATO report is a classified report done inside ISAF, based on thousands of interviews with detainees and is not an analysis but a mere informational document.

It is important to understand that detainees have several motivations for what they do or do not say, Kirby commented.