<http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/print.asp?page=2009%5C10%5C30%5Cstory_30-10-2009_pg1_1>

LAHORE: The leadership of Al Qaeda is in Pakistan, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday.

“I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,” she added.

“Maybe that’s the case; maybe they’re not gettable. I don’t know... As far as we know, they are in Pakistan,” Clinton told senior Pakistani newspaper editors in Lahore, AFP reported. “The percentage of taxes on GDP (in Pakistan) is among the lowest in the world... We (the United States) tax everything that moves and doesn’t move, and that’s not what we see in Pakistan,” she said.

“You do have 180 million people. Your population is projected to be about 300 million. And I don’t know what you’re going to do with that kind of challenge, unless you start planning right now,” she said.

“If we are going to have a mature partnership where we work together” then “there are issues that not just the United States but others have with your government and with your military security establishment”.

Separately, Clinton also met army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and exchanged views on a host of security-related issues. afp/sajjad malik

<http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSLV11497220091101>

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Pointing an accusing finger at the United States, the Palestinians on Sunday said Washington's backing for Israeli refusal to halt Jewish settlement expansion had killed any hope of reviving peace negotiations soon.

President Barack Obama himself, after persuading Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in September to meet Netanyahu in New York, called only for "restraint" in settlement, not the "freeze" he had previously proposed.

Stung by Obama's about-face and Clinton's remarks, the Palestinians voiced their frustration.

"The negotiations are in a state of paralysis, and the result of Israel's intransigence and America's back-peddling is that there is no hope of negotiations on the horizon," said Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah.