Islamabad - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday had her first face-to-face interaction with tribesmen from Pakistan's violence-plagued north-western areas, a day after she urged Islamabad to eliminate al-Qaeda from the region. The meeting was part of a deliberate "reaching-out policy" to a cross-section of people to get first-hand impressions about the militancy from the people directly affected by it and to address rising anti-Americanism.
It was held in an informal setting, locally termed as a jirga, at Pakistan's National Council of Arts (PNCA), where Secretary Clinton sat in a circle with the ethnic Pashtun elders in an open brick yard covered with traditional tribal red carpets.
She began in a sombre mood, condoling the killings of some 119 people in the "latest horrible Peshawar blast" that ripped through a crowded market on Wednesday, hours after her arrival in Islamabad on a three-day goodwill visit.
She promised to help the people, who have suffered due to terrorism and militancy.
Clinton asked the elders to leave the past behind and "turn on a new page" in mutual relations and work like friends, an obvious reference to local chagrin against US for abandoning the region after the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989.
"President Obama and I are committed to Pakistan, we have many friends here and it is my fifth visit to Pakistan," she said.
One of the participants assailed US polices and mocked the blatant use of force to push the region into the "stone age."
"God has given you force, if wisdom can also be added, we can turn this world into a garden, get out of the stone age, start negotiations in Afghanistan, then in Pakistan," said Maulvi Kifayatullah, a Pakistani lawmaker from the tribal region.
Clinton welcomed the prospect of a dialogue. "I certainly hope there will be an opportunity for negotiations," she said, so that "violence will end."
The interaction came a day after the top US diplomat told a group of Pakistani editors in the eastern city of Lahore that the al-Qaeda leadership had hideouts in Pakistan since 2002.
"I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to," Clinton said.
"The world has an interest in seeing the capture and killing of the people who are the masterminds of this terrorist syndicate. As far as we know, they are in Pakistan," she added.
Pakistan's north-western areas and tribal badlands are considered a hotbed of Taliban and al-Qaeda militants, who frequently launch cross-border attacks on international forces in Afghanistan.
On October 17 Pakistan started a major offensive against Islamist insurgents in South Waziristan, the heartland of the Taliban. Around 190 militants and 34 soldiers have died in the intensive fight.
The Taliban have launched a string of retaliatory attacks in the country's major urban centres, killing around 280 people in October.
In a separate meeting Clinton told Pakistani female television anchors that al-Qaeda "is in league with the people who are attacking Pakistan."
But she refused to answer a question about the Pakistani public's anger over regular missile attacks by US unmanned drone aircraft that according to official figures have killed more than 500 civilians.
"I won't comment on that specific matter," she said, adding that "winning this war is in Pakistan's national security interests, and we are going to do all we can to help them."
