Obama Reaches Out to Pakistan's Radical Islamist Parties, Including One That Helped Give Birth to Taliban.....

What are the odds an apology took place?.....

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) U.S. President Barack Obama has started reaching out to some of Pakistan's most fervent Islamist and anti-American parties, including one that helped give rise to the Taliban, trying to improve Washington's image in the nuclear-armed state.


Obama's special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, is initiating dialogue between the United States and religious parties previous administrations had largely shunned, both sides said.

Holbrooke invited Jamaat-e-Islami, whom some U.S. officials compare to the banned Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, to visit the heavily guarded American embassy compound in Islamabad, seeking to dispel long-running rumors that thousands of U.S. Marines would be based there.


Holbrooke rejected the party's complaints about a Western "assault" on Islam, saying "that could not be further from the truth" with Obama, who has roots in the religion, now in the White House.

Fazl-ur-Rehman, whose Jamiat-e-ulema-e-Islam party was active in rousing support for the Taliban in 1990s, also got an audience with Holbrooke and his team.

Rehman denies al Qaeda's responsibility for the September 11, 2001, attacks, and once warned that if U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan, no American in Pakistan would be safe.