HANOI: President Barack Obama on Monday said American forces would continue to go after threats on Pakistani soil, as he confirmed Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a US air strike while hailing his death as an ‘important milestone’ in efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan.
“We will work on shared objectives with Pakistan, where terrorists that threaten all our nations must be denied safe haven,” he said in a statement.
Saturday’s bombing raid, the first known American assault on a top Afghan Taliban leader on Pakistani soil, marks a major blow to the militant movement, which saw a new resurgence under Mansour.
“We have removed the leader of an organisation that has continued to plot against and unleash attacks on American and coalition forces, to wage war against the Afghan people, and align itself with extremist groups like Al Qaeda,” the US president said.
Senior Taliban sources have also confirmed the killing, adding that a shura (council) is under way to select a new leader.
Obama, who is on a three day visit to Vietnam, said Mansour had rejected efforts ‘to seriously engage in peace talks and end the violence that has taken the lives of countless innocent Afghan men, women and children’. He insisted there was no change in US tactics and that troops, who were withdrawn from combat duty in Afghanistan in 2015, would not be going back into the fray.
“We are not re-entering the day-to-day combat operations that are currently being conducted by Afghanistan forces,” he said. But Mullah Mansour was a danger to American forces there, he added.
“He is an individual who as head of the Taliban was specifically targeting US personnel and troops inside of Afghanistan who are there as part of the mission I have set to maintain a counterterrorism platform and provide assistance,” Obama said.
“On the other hand…it is my responsibility as commander in chief not to stand by, but to make sure we send a strong signal to the Taliban and others that we’re going to protect our people. And that’s exactly the message that has been sent,” he added.
He called on the Taliban’s remaining leadership to engage in peace talks as the ‘only real path’ to ending the attritional conflict.
“The Taliban should seize the opportunity to pursue the only real path for ending this long conflict — joining the Afghan government in a reconciliation process that leads to lasting peace and stability.”
Mansour was elevated to the Taliban leadership in July 2015 following the revelation that the group’s founder Mullah Omar had died two years earlier. He was killed on Saturday near the town of Ahmad Lal, in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, when missiles fired from a drone struck the car he was travelling in.
It was believed to be the first time the United States had targeted a senior Taliban figure in Pakistan. Pakistan, which says it is hosting the Afghan Taliban’s top leadership in order to exert influence over them, has lambasted the United States over the drone attack, calling it a violation of its sovereignty.
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