ISLAMABAD: The US and Pakistan vowed Tuesday to intensify a crackdown on militants hiding in lawless border areas, as top diplomat John Kerry urged renewed peace talks with India to strengthen regional stability.

Last month’s shocking school massacre in Peshawar by the Pakistani Taleban triggered global outrage, and sharpened the focus on militant groups hiding in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Pakistan’s national security adviser Sartaj Aziz, Kerry said Pakistan deserved “enormous credit” for the operation.

“I emphasized that the US is committed to deepening our security relationship with Pakistan in order to eliminate threats in the border area and elsewhere,” the US Secretary of State told reporters.

Last month’s massacre killed 150 people, mostly schoolchildren. In response the government announced plans for military courts to hear terror cases and ended a moratorium on the death penalty for convicted militants.

Pakistan executed seven militants on Tuesday, bringing to 16 the number hanged since December.

The attack was “a reminder of the serious risk of allowing extremists to find space, and be able to command that space and operate within it,” Kerry said.

Earlier in strategic talks with a top Pakistani official, he said the operation in Waziristan had already led to “significant results.”

Kerry later met senior Pakistani military commanders at their headquarters in Rawalpindi to discuss joint military efforts and plans for greater intelligence-sharing.

Kerry had planned to visit Peshawar where the massacre took place, but the State Department later issued a statement saying weather concerns forced him to cancel the trip and he later departed for Geneva.





Kerry warned that all terror groups — such as the Pakistani and Afghan Taleban, the Haqqani network and the Lashkar-e-Taiba — “continue to pose a threat not just to Pakistan and its neighbors but also to the United States and the world.”




“Make no mistake the task is a difficult one and it is not done,” Kerry said.

“We all have a responsibility to ensure that these extremists are no longer able to secure a foothold in this country or elsewhere.”

Kerry said, however, Washington would provide an additional $250 million in food, shelter and other assistance to help people displaced by conflict in tribal areas.

“We expect our defense forces to remain engaged in counterterrorism operations for some time in the foreseeable future,” said Aziz.

He said Pakistan would take action “without discrimination, against all groups” seen as spreading terror both in Pakistan and neighboring countries, adding that the Haqqani network’s infrastructure had been “totally destroyed” by the North Waziristan operation.

Visiting Pakistan after going to India at the weekend, Kerry said all militant groups should be targeted to bring security to the region.

Kerry also stressed that Washington had what he called a “uniform concern about the region’s stability,” urging India and Pakistan to return to peace talks.

“It is profoundly in the interests of Pakistan and India to move their relationship forward,” he told reporters.

“This is the hardest kind of work. It means you have to put a lot of time and effort into overcoming historical mistrust and past events, enmities.”

Washington would do whatever it could to help, the top US diplomat said, but he stressed it was ultimately up to the two sides to resolve their differences.