WASHINGTON, March 21: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged on Wednesday that local tribesmen in Waziristan were fighting the extremists hiding there. Ms Rice told a congressional hearing here that local tribal groups had begun to fight back against extremists along the Afghan border which, she said, “is remote, it is cut off, it is underdeveloped, and it is a hotbed for extremism.”

She said that to defeat the extremists it was important to separate the local population from the militant groups operating in the area and to bring economic prosperity to the entire region. “You have to separate the population from the foreign fighters. And you do that through fighting — the Pakistani army fighting them, through the tribals fighting them. But you also do that by trying to improve the economic base and the modernisation of that region,” she said.

Ms Rice said the United States was worried that Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan was serving as a possible safe haven for terrorists and urged Islamabad to deal with the extremists in the area.