prepared to take "whatever steps necessary" if Islamabad does not "change its behaviour" and continued to support terror groups, Defence Secretary Jim Mattis has warned.
Mattis also warned Pakistan of global "diplomatic isolation" and losing its Non-NATO ally status if it failed to dismantle terrorists' safe havens on its soil.
"If our best efforts fail, President Trump is prepared to take whatever steps necessary," Mattis told members of the powerful House Armed Services Committee during a Congressional testimony on South Asia and Afghanistan yesterday.
He was asked a series of questions by Congressmen who expressed their frustration on Pakistan not taking actions against terror groups.
Without much elaboration, Mattis said the US has "enormously powerful number of options" if Pakistan does not follow through and be a better promoter of stability in the region.
Mattis told lawmakers that while the US is adopting "a whole of government approach" on Pakistan, it is also aligning NATO countries on this.
"What you're going to see is 39 nations all in the NATO campaign working together to lay out what it is we need Pakistan to do," he said.
"What we are doing right now is we are aligning what Department of Treasury, Department of Defence, the Intelligence Committee, Department of State, say, this is what we must ask Pakistan to do ..
The Trump administration, he said, is going to use a whole government international effort to align the benefits and the penalties if those things are not done.
"Pakistan has lost more troops in this fight against terrorist than nearly any country out there. And yet at the same time, as you know, there's been some parsing out where some terrorists have been allowed safe havens. We're out to change that behaviour and do it very firmly," Mattis asserted.
"We're not going to back off. It will start with assistant secretaries coming out of Washington and the National Security staff members going into Pakistan soon followed by the Secretary of State," he said.
"I will go in and we have (NATO) Secretary General Stoltenberg's very clear support for this in his advocacy as the Secretary General of NATO. So we're going to continue to build this up in an international way with a whole of US government argument for the Pakistanis to work in their own best interest and ours," Mattis said.
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