PESHAWAR, Dec 7: Minister of State and Frontier Regions Sardar Yar Mohammad Rind has categorically stated that the government will not allow any foreign power to launch an operation against the Taliban or other foreign militants in tribal belt along the Afghan border.

Addressing a news conference at the Peshawar Press Club on Tuesday, he said Pakistani forces were capable of meeting any challenge from the enemy. The troops had dismantled the network of terrorists hiding in tribal areas, he claimed.

He said the government had given enough time to foreigners living in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas to get themselves registered. He said the government had taken action against elements who had challenged the writ of the government and attacked law-enforcement agencies.

The minister supported the separate Fata Secretariat and said it was making allout efforts to maintain law and order in the area. In reply to a question about the Frontier Crimes Regulations, he said the government had planned to make changes in the FCR, especially its clause 40 which had become controversial because of its misuse.

Answering a question, he said the Durand Line was a permanent border between Pakistan and Afghanistan and "we have no border dispute with Afghanistan, where an elected government headed by President Hamid Karzai is in power."

He said the government was working on a plan for repatriation of the Afghan refugees living in refugee camps and in major cities of the country. He denied charges that various intelligence agencies in tribal areas were playing the main role in tribal areas.

"The state expresses itself through different institutions and none of the institutions is a state in itself," he asserted. He denied that people were against plan to set up more cantonments in various parts of Balochistan.

The armed forces had been stationed in different parts of the province, which were being named as cantonment. Gawadar, he said, was the only place which needed presence of naval and other forces for security purposes because a port was being built there, he added.