Shiv Kumar
Tribune News ServiceMumbai, November 7
US President Barack Obama today concluded the Mumbai leg of his tour to India by meeting students from six colleges in the city. During his interaction with the students at St Xavier’s College here, he showed a less formal version of himself, letting his guard down just a wee bit as he took questions from students.
He hit the right buttons taking the podium after wife Michelle. He disarmed his listeners by praising his wife’s speaking skills. “I don’t like speaking after Michelle. As you heard her, she’s very good,” Obama thus began by striking the right chord with his audience.
However, the students, who were clearly disappointed at Obama not condemning Pakistan for sponsoring terrorism against India during his speech at the Taj Mahal hotel yesterday, took him to task.
Obama admitted that Pakistan’s fight against terrorism was not proceeding at a quick enough pace. He also made it clear that the US would not “impose” itself on Indo-Pak relations. He, however, felt that India should push its neighbour for peace talks.
Taking questions from another student, Obama noted that extremists were using Islam, one of the world’s great religions, to justify violence against innocent people. “One of the challenges that we face is how do we isolate those who have distorted notions of religious war,” Obama said.
He told another questioner that the USA was all for a section of the Taliban to disassociate themselves from the Al-Qaida, renounce violence and act according to the constitution of Afghanistan.
The President admitted that there would, however, be organisations like the Lashkar-e-Toiba that were “irreconcilable”. “They will be there and there will be need to be a military response to those who would perpetrate the kind of violence that we saw here in Mumbai in a significant ongoing way, or the kind we saw on 9/11 in New York City,” he said.
Obama, however, bemoaned lack of progress with Pakistan. He said his administration’s foreign policy had been to engage aggressively with Pakistan to communicate that they wanted nothing more than a stable, prosperous and peaceful Pakistan. “And we will work with the Pakistani Government in order to eradicate extremism that we consider a cancer within the country that can potentially engulf the country,” he said.
The US President said the Pakistan Government now understood the potential threat that existed within its own borders. “I think more Pakistanis have been killed by terrorists inside Pakistan than probably anywhere else,” he said. “Now, progress is not as quick as we’d like, partly because when you get into some of the north-west territories, these are very difficult terrains, very entrenched,” Obama said.
He went on to admit that the American voters, by voting out members of his Democratic Party in the Congressional elections earlier this month, were asking for change. The results, Obama told a questioner, reflected the “right, obligation and duty” of voters to express their unhappiness with the state of affairs in the US.
