PESHAWAR, 24 December 2003 — Pakistan yesterday offered fugitive foreign militants hiding in its rugged tribal terrain that it would not hand them over to any country if they surrender to the authorities with their weapons.
“Those who surrender will have to give an assurance to the government that they would not use the Pakistani territory against the neighboring country in future,” Governor of the North West Frontier Province Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah said during a visit to Wana in the semi autonomous South Waziristan region.
An official statement quoted Shah as declaring at a tribal gathering that if the fugitive foreigners failed to take up the offer the government would take severe action against them.
The move, aimed at Al-Qaeda and their Taleban allies, is the first by Pakistan, which has so far been deporting suspected terrorists to their home country or handed them to the United States.
South Waziristan’s Angoor Adda town was the scene of a major operation by hundreds of Pakistan Army commandos against suspected Al-Qaeda fighters on Oct. 2.
In a gunbattle which erupted when the troops surrounded their suspected hideouts, eight fighters and two Pakistani troops were killed while 18 Taleban and Al-Qaeda suspects were captured.
Those killed included Chinese Muslim militant, Hasan Mahsum, recently identified by Beijing as its “top terrorist”.
Hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taleban fugitives fled to the Pakistan’s conservative and fiercely independent tribal regions, after US-led forces began driving out the Taleban and Al-Qaeda fighters from Afghanistan.
