0
WASHINGTON, Dec 20: American forces were reported here on Thursday to be engaged in hunting Al-Qaeda men fleeing into Pakistan.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin Powell had described cooperation with Pakistan on border interdiction as “absolutely superb,” but it is not clear whether US troops are actually part of the interdiction effort.
A spokesman of the Central Command, which is in charge of the US military operation in Afghanistan, was quoted in newspaper reports on Thursday as saying that “it’s safe to say we’re actively involved in tracking Al-Qaeda in Pakistan.” The US was also stated to have offered American helicopters to transport Pakistani troops to the border regions, and unmanned Predator aircraft were reported to be patrolling the area.
The State Department, while leaving the question of military arrangements to be commented upon by the relevant authorities, believes that Pakistan has done “a very good job in fighting the war against terrorism” and ramping up its military presence on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border by deploying thousands of additional troops.
“We have seen tangible results from this effort,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told his daily briefing on Thursday afternoon. “We have seen something like 150 foreign fighters, mostly Arabs, who have been detained and are being questioned by the Pakistani authorities. We also know that they have detained several hundred other combatants crossing over from Afghanistan. So we work closely with them. They are making a major effort, and we are seeing the results of it.”
The “several hundred other combatants” referred to by Mr Boucher could be Pakistanis who went to fight with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
KASHMIR: Meanwhile, concern continues to be expressed about Pakistan’s predicament in being worried also about the situation on its other border following the rise in tension with India, although it was said that the situation had eased somewhat after Secretary Powell’s telephonic talk in the past couple of days with General Pervez Musharraf, Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar and the Indian Foreign Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh.
But the US expectation remained that General Musharraf would move against Pakistan-based organizations that were believed to have links with militancy in Kashmir. On Wednesday, the State Department had clearly said it expected the Pakistan government to take action against such organizations, and on Thursday, Mr Richard Boucher again underlined the need for such action, but also stressed the importance of fully investigating the attack on the Indian parliament building.
He said: “We have said, and we continue to believe, that India needs to investigate thoroughly. They need to reach firm conclusions on this. We have seen statements by Indian authorities that two Pakistan-based groups, the Lashkar-i-Tayyaba and the Jaish-i-Mohammad, are responsible for this. We think, first of all, those two groups have engaged in terrorist activities, but the specific case here needs to be investigated, and the Indians, I’m sure, will do that. Any evidence that India can provide to us or to others to establish that case would provide a better basis for going after the terrorists, and provide an even better basis for the Government of Pakistan to go after these terrorists, which it has said it would do.”
In an editorial in Thursday’s issue, The Washington Post said Gen Musharraf’s defenders protest that he cannot be expected to take on both the Al-Qaeda men and extremists within Pakistan at the same time, but “aggressive action on both fronts is essential, above all for Pakistan’s sake .... it offers Mr Musharraf the chance to purge his regime once and for all of its corrupting links to Islamic extremism and terror.”
If the general can act decisively in the coming weeks, the paper added, he “could put Pakistan firmly on a course to greater stability and renewed development. If he flinches, he will likely face an even greater crisis.”
In a discussion on CNN on Thursday evening, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Joseph Biden, had said once it was determined who was responsible for the New Delhi attack, Pakistan would be expected to take action. But on the same programme, Pakistan ambassador Maleeha Lodhi had cautioned against confusing Kashmir’s freedom fight with the activities of a handful of extremists.
In similar vein, The New York Times said editorially that Gen Musharraf must not give in to the temptation to see “home-grown terrorist groups as somehow more acceptable than those he has been helping to combat in Afghanistan.” Now that the general has turned Pakistan’s foreign policy around, “he has to go after forces at home that want to keep terrorism alive, provoke a war with India and eventually unseat General Musharraf himself and make Pakistan an Islamic fundamentalist state,” the NY Times asserted.
