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Act or else terror will consume you: Rice

Washington: Asking Pakistan to do “everything it can” to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror strikes to justice, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said Islamabad knows that it should act against terrorism and extremism or else it will “consume” the country.

“But this really comes down to dealing with the problem, and that means that Pakistan has got to do everything that it can to help bring the perpetrators to justice,” Ms. Rice said.

“And then also make sure they know as much as they possibly can so that you don’t have a follow-on attack of some kind,” she told the Financial Times in an interview. She also said Pakistan should really take on the issue of terrorism and extremism. “They now know it [terrorism] will consume them if they don’t, but this is a very tough problem for this civilian government,” she said as Islamabad is under intense pressure to act against terrorism in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.

Ms. Rice indicated that the fate of the India-Pakistan ties depended on Islamabad’s action against the groups which New Delhi asserts were behind the attacks. She said India and Pakistan have developed good ties with each other in the past couple of years and they would like to “preserve” them. — PTI

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