Clinton Focuses On S. Asia Dangers
More than three dozen Sikh villagers were taken from their homes and massacred in the Kashmir valley on Tuesday.
The slaughter overshadowed the president's visit to Pakistan, but focused Clinton on a centerpiece of his trip: terrorism.
His administration has vowed to "drain the swamp" that provides refuge for terrorists in South Asia.
This week, Clinton is putting pressure on the one man who may be able to pull the plug, Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf.
Musharraf tells CBS News White House Correspondent John Roberts, "Certainly we'll co-operate as far as terrorism is concerned. We denounce terrorism."
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But a flood of drugs, guns and holy war against America and its allies flows freely between Pakistan and its neighbor Afghanistan.
The conduit is the Khyber Pass, which since the days of Alexander the Great, has served as an invasion route from Central Asia to the Indian Subcontinent. Today, the threat through this pass is no longer an invading army, but terrorists trained in Afghanistan, with a reach that extends around the world.
The Khyber connection was put on the map after Osama Bin Laden exported his brand of death and destruction from Afghanistan, through Pakistan to West Africa.
In December, a Bin Laden associate was arrested in Peshawar—a Pakistani town near the border of Afghanistan—on charges of masterminding a New Year's Eve plot to attack Americans overseas.
Clinton is pushing General Musharraf to use his influence with Afghanistan's leaders—the Taliban—to bring Bin Laden to trial.
When asked if Bin Laden be extradited from Afghanistan, Musharraf told Roberts, "Well, he needs to be extradited certainly, and whatever proof is there, he needs to be tried."
Even if Musharraf could convince the Taliban to give Bin Laden up, there is an abundance of anger, frustration and weapons in the region, left over from the Afghan war, when thousands of extremists came together to bring a superpower to its knees.
Talal Hussein, an editor at the Pakistan News, says, "There are lots of militant groups which operate on their own. They are free wheelers. It's not a question of removing one Osama Bin Laden from the scene and thinking that you've done your bit."
That militant network has built up in this region over two decades of conflict. The president believes America must get deeply involved in South Asia to crack the terrorist problem, a process Clinton continues throughout this week.