McCain said he was pleased to see that the Indian and Pakistani governments seem to be working towards more negotiations for an agreement on the issue of Kashmir.
Pakistan has amassed "significant numbers" of troops in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) and they should be thinned down and shifted to the restive Waziristan and Quetta areas in the country's northwest to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Republican Senator John McCain has said.
"I would also point out, as something that you know, that is there are still significant numbers of Pakistani troops on the Kashmir area," McCain said. "And we'd love to see more of them — although some of them have come, we'd like to see more of them over in Waziristan and other areas — including Quetta and others," he said at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, in response to a question following his speech on Afghanistan.
McCain, who lost to Barack Obama in the US presidential race last year, said he was pleased to see that the Indian government and the Pakistani government seem to be working towards more negotiations and at least tentatively looking for an agreement on the issue of Kashmir.
"I know that this administration and the President and the secretary of State (Hillary Clinton) are working very hard to try to not act as intermediaries, but to do everything they can to encourage a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir issue," McCain said.
In response to another question, McCain said still he believes that a US outright military attack into Pakistan to flush out militants would probably arouse already seriously latent anti-American sentiment.
"And I don't think we have exhausted the option of the Pakistani military carrying out this mission over time," he said.
Earlier in his address, McCain said though the nature of the US commitment to Afghanistan, Pakistan and the region will
change over time, its commitment to their success will endure.
"We now have a narrow window of time in which to show clear signs of progress to a rightly-sceptical and war-weary American public, and I believe we can do this," he said. "In the next 18 months, with a proper resourced counter-insurgency strategy, we can reverse the momentum of the insurgency.
"We can create conditions for the vast majority of insurgents to lay down their arms and reintegrate peacefully into Afghan society," he said.
The US can train greater numbers of more capable, battle-tested Afghan security forces to lead the fight, in time, against "a degraded enemy", McCain said. "We can isolate al-Qaeda and target their fighters more effectively."
"And we can create the time and space for Afghan leaders, with our support and pressure, to reform their government, to crack down on corruption, and to build a nation that will never again serve as a base for attacks against America and our allies," McCain said.
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