October 10, 2008	Friday	Shawwal 10, 1429

WASHINGTON, Oct 9: Two senior US officials have warned that Al Qaeda has expanded its influence from the tribal belt to the settled areas of Pakistan, attacking targets inside the country’s capital city.

“The threat Al Qaeda poses … has materialised over the course of last year in a more challenging way into Pakistan itself,” said Gen David Petraeus who takes charge of the US Central Command on Oct 31.

The Centcom’s area of responsibility includes both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

At a separate briefing for Washington-based Pakistani journalists on Thursday, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher acknowledged that the United States was “quite concerned” about the situation in the settled areas of the NWFP.

“Last year, the militants were making forays into the settled areas from their bases in the tribal areas,” he said.

“Now the militants are doing more and more things in the settled areas. There is an obvious expansion of militants’ influence in the settled areas.”

The two officials, however, disagreed on the importance of the Afghan peace talks in Saudi Arabia last week which enabled Afghan officials and Taliban representatives to talk to face-to-face for the first time since the US invasion in 2001.

“If there are people who are willing to reconcile (with the Afghan government), then that would be a positive step in some of these areas that have actually been spiralling downward,” said Gen Petraeus.

“It appears it was an iftar,” said Mr Boucher, who looks after South Asian affairs at the State Department while commenting on the Saudi peace initiative. “I would not hang too much on it.”

But like Gen Petraeus, Mr Boucher also welcomed the Afghan government’s decision to talk to the so-called ‘reconcilable’ members of the Taliban.

“There has to be a way for them to come in,” he said. “We have always known that there has to be a process like this, an Afghan process.”

Gen Petraeus said negotiations with insurgents willing to consider reconciliation could reduce violence by isolating hard-core militants, which is what occurred in Iraq’s Anbar province when Sunni tribesmen joined US forces against Al Qaeda.

“You’ve got to set things up. You’ve got to know who you’re talking to. You’ve got to have your objectives straight,” the general told a conservative Washington think-tank, the Heritage Foundation, on Wednesday.

The two officials, however, had more in common in their assessment of the situation in Pakistan. Both see Al Qaeda spreading its tentacles into Pakistan but also trust the Pakistani government’s commitment to fight the terrorists.

“There has been an increasing focus of operations by Pakistan,” the general noted, saying that some recent steps taken by the Pakistani government were reassuring.

The US general, however, also stressed the need for a “sustained commitment” to Pakistan by “our government together with other countries in the coalition and elsewhere including some of those in the Gulf states.”

Mr Boucher noted that the new elected leadership of Pakistan has made very it clear that it sees terrorism as a challenge to the vision the Pakistanis have for their future: a modern, moderate and Islamic Pakistan.

“The US shares that goal. We are happy to support, the goal of the government and Pakistani people,” he said.

Mr Boucher, however, said it was difficult to say if Al Qaeda now had more influence in the settled areas than it did in the tribal areas.

Both Gen Petraeus and Mr Boucher refused to discuss US military strikes into Pakistan.

“Cannot talk about any particular action,” said Mr Boucher.

Mr Boucher also welcomed the Pakistani military’s decision to brief parliamentarians on the security situation, saying that the US supports the democratic process in Pakistan.

“There’s need for military, political and economic plans to be an integrated,” he said.

The US, he said, was working to expand the group’s membership and also to hold its first working meeting at Abu Dhabi later this month or early next month.

Mr Boucher said that instead of providing direct financial assistance to Pakistan, the Friends of Pakistan group will focus on matching Islamabad’s plans and programmes “with our commitments.”

“We are going to make it work positively and constructively to help the government institute programmes that help the country and democracy,” he said.

Asked if the United States would help President Zardari raise $100 billion he said Pakistan needs to revitalize its economy, Mr Boucher said instead of offering cash, each member of the Friends of Pakistan group will bring to the table how it plans to help Pakistan.

“The sum total will be quite significant.”

Mr Boucher said the US was also talking to the IMF, the Asian Development bank and other donors to provide budgetary support to Pakistan and to help stabilize its foreign exchange accounts.

Mr Boucher rejected the doomsday scenario that paint Pakistan as the most dangerous place on earth and predicts its disintegration.

“There are a lot of very dangerous things happening in Pakistan, more in Pakistan than anywhere else in the world, but it does not make Pakistani a nation in danger” of disintegration, he said.

“I see that Pakistanis getting themselves organized, government and the army cooperating, a broad consensus to fight the militants,” he said, but warned that the country faced “a very challenging task, because they face a bunch of very dangerous people.”

Mr Boucher said it was wrong to compare Pakistan with Cambodia after the Vietnam war.

“I don’t see anything like that happen. I hope nothing like Kampuchea happens in Pakistan. It has a modern economy, modern army, firmly committed to democracy. It gives us a lot of hope.”

Mr Boucher also made it clear that the United States cannot offer a nuclear deal to Pakistan as it did to India.

“We are absolutely committed to working with Pakistan on its energy needs,” he said, but the nuclear deal “is unique to India, not a model for anything else.”

Pakistan’s energy problems, he said, were different from India’s and need to be handled differently.

The country’s energy problems, he said, were balanced by its energy potentials, such as the coal field in Thar, hydro-power resources, alternate energy and the wind power in Makran.

The United States, he said, would help Pakistan develop these potentials.