U.S. Official Expresses Confidence in Pakistan

The chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, echoed the administration’s new review of regional policy, contending that efforts to beat back the insurgency inside Afghanistan would fail without better local and central governing and a healthier domestic economy. But a meeting with Afghan reporters demonstrated the popular opinion here that Pakistan remains the most significant hurdle to victory over the insurgency inside Afghanistan.

“To make the kind of progress we need to make in Afghanistan, progress in Pakistan is equally critical,” Admiral Mullen said. And he assured his audience that he had made clear to senior Pakistani military officials “my strong desire to see more action taken against these places and to root out the terrorists.”

He said that he had weighed Pakistani military gains against insurgent and terrorist cells over the past two years, and that “it is very possible that the Pakistan military can achieve the goal, as well, which shuts down those safe havens.”

But although Admiral Mullen expressed confidence in Pakistan’s ability to clamp down on insurgents within its borders, many analysts are posing a thornier question: How committed is it to doing so? During his tour of the region, Admiral Mullen urged “strategic patience” with Pakistan and said its leaders understood the threat to their own legitimacy from the domestic insurgency.

Ending a week of travel that included visits to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, Admiral Mullen cited recent battlefield successes against insurgents in the traditional Taliban heartland of southern Afghanistan. But he also acknowledged the need to cement progress with sustained security missions and the introduction of better local government and economic development.

“Many of our accomplishments, even the ones I saw down south, are tenuous and can be lost,” he said. “We can take nothing for granted at this point.”

The admiral’s comments, a day after President Obama released a one-year review of the new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, were some of the strongest on the Afghan government’s shortcomings since the administration abandoned its get-tough approach with President Hamid Karzai in the spring, having concluded that sharp public critiques did more harm than good.

“Now is the time, as this strategy review tells us, to press home our advantages and redouble our efforts, lest gains in security — hard-fought and hard-won — are not followed up by more important gains in governance and rule of law,” Admiral Mullen said.

Though administration officials acknowledge that corruption in the Afghan government has continued unabated, any criticism of the government for corruption was noticeably absent from the public summary of Mr. Obama’s strategy review.

Mr. Obama took office last year vowing to distance himself from Mr. Karzai, who, in the view of some in his administration, had a relationship with President George W. Bush that was too cozy. For more than a year, the Obama administration exhorted Mr. Karzai on corruption. The Afghan leader responded with public rants against the West and threatened to join the Taliban, leading the Obama administration to soften its strategy.

Speaking to American correspondents traveling with Admiral Mullen, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said Afghan and alliance forces “have arrested the momentum of the Taliban in many areas of the country and reversed it in some, but by no means all.” He also cautioned that “progress is fragile and reversible.”

The American ambassador to Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry, said the administration intended to make good on its pledge to begin reducing American troop levels next July, if conditions warrant, but he went out of his way to underscore that the United States and NATO would not waver in their commitment to the mission through 2014, when NATO has called for the Afghan government to take over security duties.

To illustrate that the rest of the American government has joined the fight, he said the number of diplomats and aid workers in Afghanistan had grown to 1,100 from 300 over two years.