WASHINGTON: Pakistan should first create a secure environment for the refugees to return home before launching an operation against Baitullah Mehsud and his militants, says US special envoy Richard Holbrooke.

The US envoy made this statement in an interview to The Washington Post, published on Monday when other media outlets claimed that Pakistan was engaged in secret talks with the reclusive Taliban leader.

The report claimed that Pakistan had planned a major military offensive against Mehsud but delayed it because of these secret talks.

Mr Holbrooke, however, indicated no such links. Instead, he made it clear that the United States did not expect Pakistan to launch another major military offensive while it was still struggling with the refugee problem.

‘Baitullah Mehsud is a dreadful man, and his elimination is an imperative. However, the first imperative is to secure the areas the refugees are going back into,’ said Mr Holbrooke.

Although Mr Holbrooke said it could be beneficial to have simultaneous offensives -- the US Marines on the Afghan side and the Pakistani army in Fata -- the greater concern is unfinished business elsewhere. ‘Why would I push them to start an offensive when they have two million people they have to protect first?’ the US envoy said.

The Pakistan army also denied any negotiations with Mehsud, saying that it wanted to surround the militants and use air power and artillery to ‘soften them up’.

The operation is a ‘punitive measure’, said Maj-Gen Athar Abbas, head of the army’s public relations wing.

At least six brigades of Pakistani troops have blocked the four main arteries into Mehsud’s fiefdom in South Waziristan, media reports said.

Pakistani aircraft, along with unmanned American planes, have attacked Mehsud’s territory in recent weeks. Soldiers have deployed into neighbouring North Waziristan and have imposed an economic blockade, trying to withhold food and supplies from the Taliban, a US defence official in Washington told the Post.

The blockade and US strikes have forced thousands of Mehsud’s men to flee the area.

Meanwhile, media outlets claiming secret talks between Islamabad and Mehsud said they still had no details. They supported their claim by arguing that Pakistan had delayed a planned operation against Mehsud after having corralled his stronghold in South Waziristan.

The Pakistani government, the reports said, had a one-point agenda: stop attacking government targets. This would not be a total surrender, but a guarantee that Baitullah Mehsud would not indulge in any anti-state activity in future, the media quoted unidentified Pakistani officials as saying.

The delay in launching a military offensive in South Waziristan would annoy Pakistan’s US allies, the reports claimed.

Ambassador Holbrooke’s statement that Washington understood Islamabad’s position and was not pushing Pakistan to launch yet another offensive, however, contradicted this claim.

The Post also quoted Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit as saying that while they were focussed on the refugees, they did not want to rush into opening new fronts against the Taliban.

‘We would not like to do anything haphazardly. If you open so many fronts at the same time, then the danger is you will not achieve success on any front. So we would like to move with utmost circumspection,’ said Mr Basit. The tribal areas are ‘a different ballgame and we need to understand how difficult it is’.