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The United States has warned Pakistan of "very severe consequences" if a successful terror attack in America was traced back to that country. The Obama administration has delivered new and stiff warnings to Pakistan after the failed Times Square terror plot that it must urgently move against the nexus of Islamic militancy in the lawless tribal regions, American and Pakistani officials said.The Pakistani Taliban is suspected to be behind the failed bid to bomb New York's Times Square last Saturday. If proven, it would be the group's first act in the US."We've made it very clear that if - heaven forbid - an attack like this that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences," said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday in an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes.Her remarks came in the backdrop of the arrest of Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, 30, who has been charged with driving the crude homemade bomb into Manhattan. While he has reportedly told authorities that he acted alone, investigators have uncovered possible links to the Pakistani Taliban and a Kashmiri Islamist group. Shahzad has admitted to the failed plot and to receiving training in Pakistan's North Waziristan region.The American military commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley A McChrystal, met the Pakistani military chief, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in Islamabad on Friday and urged Pakistan to move more quickly in beginning a military offensive against the Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda in North Waziristan, Americans and Pakistanis familiar with the visit said.The new pressure from Washington was characterised by both the Pakistani and American officials as a sharp turnaround from the relatively polite encouragement adopted by the Obama administration in recent months. "We are saying, 'sorry, if there is a successful attack, we will have to act'," said one of the American officials.According to another American official, General Kayani was essentially told that "you can't pretend any longer that this is not going on...we are saying you have got to go into North Waziristan."The American ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, met Pakistan's President, Asif Ali Zardari, after the failed bombing and used "forceful" language to convey the American point that the Pakistanis had to move more assertively against the militants threaded through the society, a Pakistani official said.Meanwhile, Clinton acknowledged that Pakistan has become far more helpful in fighting terrorists during the past year. "We've gotten more cooperation. It's been a real sea change in the commitment we have seen from the Pakistani government. We want more, we expect more," Clinton said in the interview to be aired on Sunday. Excerpts were released on Friday."We also have a much better relationship, military to military, intelligence to intelligence, government to government than we had before," said Clinton. "I think that there was a double game going on in the previous years, where we got a lot of lip service but very little produced," she said.
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