‘ISI links with Haqqani network, Taliban should be acknowledged’

WASHINGTON: US Senator John McCain on Sunday said the role of ties between Afghan insurgents and Inter Service Intelligence agency (ISI) needed to be acknowledged.
“We have to deal with Pakistan on a basis of realism, that there are connections between the ISI and the Haqqani network and the Taliban,” McCain said in a news conference.
Fellow Republican Senator Lindsey Graham also said they he were concerned about Pakistani ties with insurgents.
“Our job as members of the Senate is to tell the Pakistan ‘you need to chose who you want your friends to be and who you want your enemies to be’. We want to be your friends.”
Independent Senator Joe Lieberman, who said the group would warn Afghan President Hamid Karzai that he needed to tackle corruption and a long-running dispute over parliamentary elections, to hold onto U.S. support.
“One of the things we want to say to President Karzai when we meet him tonight is that back home in Congress there is a war weariness and a kind of fiscal stress,” Lieberman said.