Washington: Terming the "ignoring" of ground realities in Pakistan and Afghanistan as one of the "dangerous" failures of the Bush administration, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has said that she will adopt a "new policy" towards Pakistan.

"I will take a new policy toward Pakistan, one that builds on the democratic yearnings expressed by the Pakistani people in the elections last week and recognises that the border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan are among the most important and dangerous in the world," she said.

Ignoring these realities has been one of the most "dangerous" failures of the Bush foreign policy, Clinton said at a Foreign Policy speech at the George Washington University here yesterday.

She lashed out Bush for his continued support to President Musharraf even when he moved further and further away from democracy and his strategies in tackling Al Qaida.

"I urged the White House to send a high-level presidential envoy. I said there is a lot of misunderstanding between President Musharraf and President Karzai and it is going to cause us problems. That was not accepted by the White House. And instead, full support continued for President Musharraf as he moved further and further away from democracy; as his strategy for battling Al Qaida, the Taliban and other extremists proved time and again to be inadequate," Clinton said.

She said that the Pakistani people have essentially repudiated the Bush administration's policy and created a new dynamic that could lead to greater freedom and democracy, or to a greater crisis with implications for the war in Afghanistan.

Source : PTI