PESHAWAR, Pakistan: A bomb killed a secular lawmaker in a key city near the Afghan border yesterday as the new US envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan was in town.
The bombing in Peshawar, which has seen regular attacks by militants, also wounded six and offered a graphic example of the challenges President Barack Obama’s new administration will face in the region.
Police said it appeared yesterday’s bomb was hidden in a motorcycle and was detonated by remote control when a vehicle carrying Awami National Party lawmaker Alam Zeb Khan passed. The lawmaker, his body guard and two of his staff were hit along with three passers-by, said police officer Hamid Khan.
The lawmaker later died at a hospital, said Wajid Ali Khan, a minister in the provincial government. The ANP, which holds power in the northwest, has spoken out strongly against the militants. Several top party leaders have narrowly survived suicide bombings.
Footage on Dawn TV showed US envoy Richard Holbrooke arriving at the governor’s house in Peshawar yesterday morning. There was no suggestion he was close to the site of the attack.
Military commanders briefed him on the fight against militants in the border areas, officials said. “Holbrooke met the top military commander for the northwestern region, Lt. Gen. Masood Aslam, and attended a briefing on security issues after arrival in Peshawar,” a military official said, requesting anonymity.
Holbrooke was on the third day of a visit to Pakistan to help Obama chart a new strategy to beat the insurgencies raging here and in Afghanistan. US officials provided no details of his agenda for security reasons. The Dawn TV report said Holbrooke also visited a Pakistani military base near the border.
Obama spoke by phone with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari yesterday, their first contact since Obama’s inauguration, Zardari’s office said in statement. It provided few specifics.
Militants based in the tribal regions close to Afghanistan are fighting Pakistan’s pro-American government. Peshawar, a bustling city with a history of lawlessness, lies on the main supply line for Western troops in Afghanistan.
Western officials also worry that Al-Qaeda could be training volunteers in the border zone for attacks far beyond Pakistan.
Also yesterday, an official said security forces detained a New Zealand national trying to enter a notorious militant stronghold in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Barkatullah Khan, a government official in the town of Tank, said troops discovered the man while checking passengers on a bus bound for Wana, the main town in the South Waziristan region.
Khan said the man had a New Zealand passport that identified him as 35-year-old Mark Taylor. He said Taylor had grown a beard since his passport photo was taken and was wearing local dress. Khan said the man was taken for questioning.
New Zealand has no embassy in Pakistan. Officials could not be immediately reached at either its consulate in Karachi nor its foreign ministry in Wellington.
In the increasingly fragile Swat region in the northwest, thousands of residents in Barikot, near the region’s main city of Mingora, rallied to demand peace. Swat, a former tourist haven, is under increasing threat from militants as violence continues to spread beyond Pakistan’s tribal areas near Afghanistan.
Police said the Taleban briefly detained a group of Red Cross staffers, including foreigners, in the Swat Valley.
Red Cross spokesman Jean-Pascal Moret said the organization had re-established contact with the group and that they were “safe and sound” and returning to Peshawar.
Suspected militants have abducted several foreigners in recent months, including a Polish geologist apparently killed by his captors last week and an American UN worker seized early this month in the border city of Quetta.
