U.S., Pakistan discuss New York bombing plot

U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson on Wednesday held meetings with Pakistani leaders on the New York bombing attempt, U.S. State Department said.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Patterson had met with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

"She will continue to have other meetings with senior Pakistani officials in the coming days, to work collectively on this investigation," said Crowley.

He said Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, on Wednesday morning also spoke with Foreign Minister Qureshi.

Crowley said Pakistan are fully cooperating in the investigation and it recognizes this is "a shared responsibility and a shared threat."

When asked to confirm the arrests made by Pakistan in the southern city of Karachi, Crowley said U.S. is currently not in a position to verify any number of arrests, apparently trying to avoid impression of intervention.

The suspect of the New York bombing plot is identified as Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan. He was arrested at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York late Monday as he was trying to flee the country on a Dubai-bound flight.

U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday charged him with five counts, including terrorism and trying to use a weapon of mass destruction.

Pakistani law-enforcement agencies on Tuesday arrested several suspects, including a friend and the father-in-law of Shahzad, local media reported.

Source:Xinhua