The US President, Mr Barack Obama, has no schedule, at this moment, to go to Pakistan this year, his National Security Advisor has said, as the diplomatic fallout from the killing of Osama bin Laden intensified.
“There’s not a visit on his schedule at this point, right, to go to Pakistan,” the White House National Security Advisor, Mr Tom Donilon, told the NBC news channel in an interview.
“But there wasn’t, at this point in terms of scheduling before the event of last Sunday,” he added.
While the White House appears to be unwilling to establish a link between Mr Obama to Pakistan this year and the last week’s American operation in Abbottabad near Islamabad in which Osama bin Laden was killed; speculation is rife that the US President is unlikely to visit Pakistan unless there is normalisation in ties between the two countries and the US is assured that terrorist elements inside this country no longer enjoys any kind of support from the establishment.
Just before his maiden trip to India last November, Mr Obama during a meeting with the visiting delegation of Pakistani officials at the White House had announced that he would be travelling to Pakistan later this year.
And before this, his Pakistani counterpart Mr Asif Ali Zardari too would be visiting him at the White House early this year, reporters were told.
The State Department too hasn’t announced the dates of the strategic dialogue which were held three times last year. Initially scheduled to be held in March, it was postponed amid the Raymond Davis controversy. Unofficially, it was being told that the strategic dialogue would be held in the last half of May.
The State Department spokesman, Mr Mark Toner, told reporters that no dates have been determined yet.