KABUL - Pakistan could play a crucial role to decrease insurgency in Afghanistan, Senator John Kerry said during a hearing on regional security on Tuesday. While chairing a hearing to examine the current threat posed by al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has said it requires a persistent diplomacy "to convince the Pakistani military leaders that the real threat to their sovereignty comes not from its eastern border and not from across the Atlantic, but from the violent extremists within their own country".

The Haqqani network is increasingly growing in North Waziristan in Pakistan and provides sanctuary to al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban, Senator John Kerry said. Senator Kerry highlighted that threats posed by Lashkar-e-Tayeba, responsible for deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks, could not only destabilize the region but it could threaten the US homeland security. He has described the war in Afghanistan critical and said security gains in southern Afghanistan have led to political space and we should seize the opportunity. He has said we must make sure that Afghans have the potential to avoid the country from slipping back to a sanctuary to the Taliban and civil war.

Examining the impact of Pakistan on the future of Afghanistan he said terrorists and militants "continue to exploit the 1,200 mile porous border that separates the two countries", and we need to work with Pakistan to deal "with the problem of the sanctuary for purveyors of violence in both nations."(Tolo News)