October 23, 2003	Thursday	Sha’aban 26, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Oct 22: Pakistan has started fencing parts of its western border with Afghanistan to stop Al Qaeda and Taliban men from mounting attacks on Afghan targets and US-led forces, the military said on Wednesday.

Military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan said new searchlight towers and checkpoints were also being set up along the Afghan border in southwestern Balochistan province.

“We are erecting the security fence as part of our counter-terrorism efforts,” he told Reuters.

He did not say how long the fence would be. The Balochistan border accounts for about half of the 2,450-km (1,520-mile) frontier.

The move comes after growing calls from US and Afghan officials for Pakistan to take steps to stop militant infiltration into Afghan territory.

Pakistan, a key ally in the US-led war on terror, has deployed thousands of troops along its Afghan frontier, but has been accused of being half-hearted in combating Taliban militants, whose regime in Afghanistan it backed until the Sept 11 attacks in 2001.

Since early August, Afghanistan has been hit by its worst wave of violence since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, and many of the militant fighters are believed to be crossing from Pakistan, mainly from Balochistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai last month told US President George W. Bush he was concerned that support for the Taliban was being preached by some in Pakistan’s border region.

Earlier this month, the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review magazine reported that the Taliban had bought more than 1,000 motorcycles over the past three months in Quetta region.

Citing Western and Afghan intelligence sources, it said these would be used to transport up to 2,500 guerillas across the border to attack the Afghan military and the 11,500-strong US-led foreign force in the country.

Pakistan says it has been doing its best to prevent guerillas from crossing the border and that it has arrested more than 500 Taliban and al Qaeda militants since the war on terror began.

But it has said it lacks the resources to properly patrol its western border and called on the United States to provide more support.

Responding to US and Afghan criticisms, Pakistan forces earlier this month killed eight suspected al Qaeda and Taliban militants in a clash in the semi-autonomous tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Pakistan officials say two important al Qaeda leaders, including one with a price on his head, were killed, but a US official told Reuters in Washington that none of the top 10 or 20 al Qaeda leaders were believed to be among the dead.

Pakistan officials also say they are trying to track down a suspected Al Qaeda financier — Egyptian-born Canadian Ahmed Said Khadr alias Abu Abdur Rehman — who was thought to have slipped away shortly before the raid.—Reuters