ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s new government appears committed to the fight against Al-Qaeda and the Taleban, a top US envoy said yesterday while dismissing reports of peace talks with militants in neighboring Afghanistan.
Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher’s visit to Pakistan comes amid a surge in violence on both sides of the border and tensions over US missile strikes on targets inside Pakistan.
Some US officials doubt that Islamabad is willing or able to take on the militants and criticized earlier army operations that ended in short-lived peace deals they say gave the extremists time to regroup.
But Boucher said he was encouraged by what he has seen in the border region of Bajaur, where Pakistani troops launched a major offensive in August that officials claim has killed 1,000 militants. “I think it is good Pakistan is taking serious military action against the terrorists,” Boucher told reporters after three days of meetings with Pakistani leaders, including the president.
“We have seen the government has shown the determination and willingness to see this through to the end.” The militants have put up strong resistance to the offensive and have stepped up suicide attacks around the country, including last month’s blast at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad that killed 54 people.
Boucher dismissed reports of peace negotiations between the government and Taleban in Afghanistan after militants sat down with Afghan officials in Saudi Arabia last month. “At this point I can say there is not much there,” Boucher said.
The US missile strikes in Pakistan — and a highly unusual ground raid by American commandos last month — have angered civil and military leaders, who say they fan militancy.
In line with an apparent American policy of not confirming or denying the strikes, Boucher did not directly answer or ignored questions about the raids, but did say that some reports blaming the US for attacks were wrong. “Every time something explodes there, the US is accused of doing it,” he said.
In the latest violence close to the border, 12 suspected militants were killed in Bajaur in shelling or airstrikes overnight and into yesterday, said Jamil Khan, the No. 2 representative of the government in the largely autonomous area.
In the northwest’s Swat Valley, the army raised the death toll from clashes the previous day to 25 suspected militants while saying a further seven were killed yesterday. Sunday’s bombs hit an ammunition dump in the Barthana area, causing extensive damage.
The army said it had no reports on civilian casualties there. But Anwer Ali, a Barthana resident, told The Associated Press in a phone interview the bombing by fighter jets had hit a house, killing a woman and two of her children. Boucher traveled Sunday to the city of Peshawar to meet North-West Frontier Province chief Amir Haider Khan Hoti. Hoti told Boucher that the provincial government wants to “resolve all political problems through peaceful dialogue, but there wouldn’t be any compromise on maintaining the writ of the government,” the statement said.
