No suggestion to impose sanctions against Pakistan: US

State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner while briefing the newsmen in Washington on Tuesday said that the United States is not planning any sanctions against Pakistan for not taking actions against terrorist groups.

"Suggestive of any kind of sanctions, we re not there," the State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner told reporters. "I don t think we re even at that point," Toner said.

"I mean, we continue to have, conversations with the highest level of the government of Pakistan and our basic point in all these conversations is that Pakistan must target all militant groups, including those that target Pakistan s neighbours and eliminate all safe havens," he said.

"What we ve received in terms of response from Pakistan authorities is that they have assured of their intentions to do so. We have been encouraged by some of the steps they ve taken, some of their recent counter-terrorism operations along the border of Afghanistan and we re going to continue to work with them to increase those efforts and apply more pressure on these groups," he said.

Referring to the remarks made by the Secretary of State John Kerry during his recent trip to India and Bangladesh, Toner said the US has had very frank conversations with Pakistan s leadership and military leadership about the need to focus more efforts on those terrorist groups, all the terrorist groups rather, that are operating from within Pakistani soil, or territory rather.

"We continue to have that discussion with them. We have seen some efforts to make progress in that regard. We re going to continue to have those conversations with them as we move forward and it is in Pakistan s interest, it s in Afghanistan s interest to go after these terrorist groups, to route them out and to destroy them," he said.