ISLAMABAD, 22 September 2005 — Pakistan will get $30 million from the United States in extra funding this year to fight drugs and improve security along its border with Afghanistan, sources said yesterday.

The money will be used for vehicles, communications and surveillance equipment for Pakistan’s Frontier Corps, expansion of its Anti-Narcotics Force, and for building bridges to increase law enforcers’ access to remote border areas, the embassy said in a statement. The funds supplement $30.9 million already allocated this year.

Pakistan, a strong ally of the United States in its war on terrorism, has deployed 80,000 troops at its western border. It denies allegations it allows Taleban militants to shelter on its soil for attacks in neighboring Afghanistan.

Pakistani troops have arrested four suspected militants and seized a cache of weapons, including an anti-aircraft gun, during raids in a remote northwestern tribal region near Afghanistan, an army official said yesterday.

The suspects were rounded up late Tuesday from militant hideouts near Shakai, a town in South Waziristan.

The official said the suspects, all local tribesmen, had been moved to an army detention facility in the region for questioning.

“We have recovered assault rifles, bombs, mines and other ammunition from Shakai in previous raids, but it is the first time that an anti-aircraft gun was recovered from there,” he said.

Meanwhile, three explosions rocked Quetta, provincial capital of southwestern Balochistan, yesterday but police said there were no casualties.

The blasts in Quetta, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, broke windows of some houses in the city’s western and eastern neighborhoods, police officer Mohammad Akaml said. “The explosions occurred in three neighborhoods and created a big noise, but they did not cause any casualties,” he said.

Musharraf Congratulates Karzai

Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf yesterday congratulated his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai for the successful conduct of Sunday’s parliamentary election.

“It is with great pleasure that I convey to you my warmest felicitations on the successful conduct of the parliamentary and provincial council elections in Afghanistan on Sept. 18,” Musharraf said in a message to Karzai released by the Foreign Ministry.