ISLAMABAD, July 16: The government on Monday decided to send reinforcements to the North West Frontier Province and tribal areas in the wake of an alarming rise in attacks on security agencies’ personnel across the region.
The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by President Gen Pervez Musharraf. It was the second meeting in three days following the Lal Masjid operation.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, NWFP Governor Ali Mohammed Jan Aurakzai and representatives of security agencies attended the meeting.
The governor briefed the meeting about events leading to the break-up of the truce in North Waziristan Agency.
The meeting, according to sources, expressed concern over the sudden rise in violence in areas bordering Afghanistan.
The meeting felt that the situation had the potential to prompt Nato into taking action on Pakistani soil and airspace.
The governor said the peace deal was not struck with the `local Taliban’. Instead, it was signed with the tribal elders and only they can scrap it. The participants asked the governor to contact the elders for defusing the situation.
Addressing the meeting, the president reiterated that ‘Pakistan condemns all forms and manifestations of terrorism and is desirous of peace and stability in Afghanistan’.
The agenda of the Pakistan-Afghan grand jirga, scheduled for the second week of next month, also came under discussion. The meeting stressed the need for securing `maximum support’ for the government’s measures aimed at tackling extremism and terrorism.
Interestingly, NWFP Chief minister Akram Khan Durrani, instead of attending the meeting in Islamabad, chaired a ‘grand jirga’ in Peshawar where he reiterated the provincial government’s stance that it had not formally sought troop deployment in the province.
Earlier, MMA leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman had opposed the deployment of troops in NWFP’s settled districts and had hinted at holding of jirgas to restore peace in these areas.
