| | Pakistan Dismisses Karzai Threat to Mount Cross-Border Attacks Bloomberg
06/16/2008
By Ed Johnson
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Pakistan dismissed Afghan President Hamid Karzai's threat to send troops across the border to attack the Taliban and said it hoped his warning doesn't mark a return to the "blame game" over frontier security failures.
``Pakistan shall defend its territorial sovereignty,'' Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Sadiq told reporters yesterday in Islamabad, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported.
Relations between the neighboring countries are tense as they blame each other for failing to stop al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters crossing the 2,430-kilometer (1,510-mile) border.
Karzai's threat to deploy troops onto Pakistani soil may further strain cooperation in the fight against terrorism. The government in Islamabad last week denounced as ``senseless'' an air strike by Afghanistan-based U.S. forces, saying it destroyed a border post and killed 11 Pakistani soldiers. The Pentagon said it targeted militants and that no structure was hit.
Afghanistan has the right to send soldiers across the border to tackle militants who ``come and kill Afghan and coalition troops,'' Karzai said at a news conference yesterday in Kabul, the Associated Press reported.
Afghan forces will attack Pakistani-Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, AP cited Karzai as saying. ``We will go after him now and hit him in his house.''
Taliban Leader
Mehsud commands as many as 5,000 fighters and formed an alliance of about five pro-Taliban groups in December, known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, according to the U.S. military academy's Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. He is Pakistan's most prominent Taliban leader, blamed for staging attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan and planning the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.
Karzai also threatened to hunt down Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who sheltered al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden before being ousted by a U.S.-led coalition in late 2001. Pakistan says Omar is in southern Afghanistan.
Pakistan wants good relations with its western neighbor, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said in response to Karzai's threat, AP reported. The frontier is too long to stop people from crossing, ``even if Pakistan puts its entire army along the border,'' he said.
Karzai's government is backed by more than 70,000 international soldiers battling the Taliban insurgency. His national army, which currently stands at 57,000 personnel, won't have the manpower to lead the fight until next year, U.S. Major General Robert Cone, who is in charge of training the force, said last month.
Al-Qaeda Camps
U.S. intelligence agencies say al-Qaeda is helping finance and direct the insurgency from camps in Pakistan's tribal region, where gunmen train, rearm and plan attacks.
About 400 Taliban militants were among 870 inmates who escaped from Kandahar prison in southern Afghanistan June 13 when insurgents attacked the jail, according to AP.
Afghan forces recaptured 20 prisoners a day later, the news agency said, citing Sayed Agha Saqib, the provincial police chief. U.S.-led coalition troops killed more than 15 militants during the hunt, according to the report.
While the prison break was a tactical success for the Taliban, it won't have a long-term impact on the conflict, AP cited the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as saying.
Pakistan has deployed about 100,000 security personnel along the border to combat militants since 2003, according to President Pervez Musharraf, who is regarded by the U.S. as a key ally in its war on terrorism.
Gilani's government, made up of parties that defeated Musharraf loyalists in February elections, began truce talks with militants in April in an effort to cut terrorist attacks that killed more than 2,000 people in Pakistan last year.
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