The US said that the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, which so far had focused primarily on India, is having global aspirations and has spread its tentacles beyond Pakistan and Afghanistan, as manifested by the David Headley case. "Generally, LeT was east focused on India. They're now in the west. Actually, they're not just in the west, focused on Pakistan. There are LeT elements focused on Afghanistan," Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said.
"We've seen in our own country, recently -- with Detroit, with Times Square, with Headley, with Zazi -- we've seen an increasing level of distributed threats, if you will, and an ability to expand this federated approach which Al Qaeda has had. And al-Qaida is at the centre of this and Al Qaeda leadership resides in Pakistan.
We know that and that's why this strategy, from my perspective, is so important, in terms of getting at Al Qaeda leadership and making sure they've got nowhere to go," he said. "I think Al Qaeda continues to be the seminal threat and the leadership, obviously. While they've had some challenges in the last couple of years, but I think that's really the heart of it. And their strategic goals include, again, killing as many Westerners and Americans as possible," he said.
Al-Qaeda still seeks nuclear weapons and the US is increasingly concerned about the nexus between terrorists and nuclear weapons. "I think we all, globally, have to do all we can to make sure that doesn't happen," Mullen said.
Mullen said he has been raising this concern of his with Pakistan in every meeting he has with their leaders. "If I go back even a couple years, when I first started going to Pakistan on a regular basis, it's an area that I've raised with the military leadership there from day one, and in terms of both concern and a desire to understand the security level. I come away from that, over a period of time, with a belief that these are the most important weapons in the Pakistani arsenal," he added.
That is both understood by their leadership and, in particular, their military leadership and they go to extraordinary efforts to both protect and secure them, he added. "That said, I think we all are limited -- in what we know. We know a certain amount. We have invested in, over the last couple of years, a substantial amount of money, through the Department of Energy, specifically, to improve their security," Mullen said.
