Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has received a letter from four prominent congresspeople urging her to designate the militant Haqqani network as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said Friday.
Nuland said the letter from Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Representatives C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger (D-Md.) and Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), and an FTO designation for the group was under review by the State Department.
"As we continue our review we consider it absolutely essential to designate individuals because that allows us to pursue the assets of individuals rather than have to sort of try to divine who might be covered by a blanket designation," Nuland said during the daily press briefing.
"When we designate these individuals, it allows us to freeze any U.S.-based assets and to pursue civil and criminal penalties against U.S. individuals who conduct any transactions with them," she added.
The four lawmakers, who also act as the heads of the house and senate intelligence committees, made their decision to write to the Secretary after returning from a recent trip to Afghanistan. They attribute recent U.S. embassy and local parliament attacks there to the al-Qaeda linked group.
The Haqqani network has long been scrutinized as one of the most active enemy groups operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan by U.S. military and intelligence officials. In his final days as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen told the senate the network was "a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency."
The network, led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, an ethnic Pashtun and former mujahideen commander, is thought to be behind multiple terrorist attacks in the last several decades, including last year's 19-hour attack on the U.S. embassy and NATO bases in Kabul that resulted in the deaths of eight people.
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