| Pakistan tells US to seal Afghan border for Waziristan offensive |
ISLAMABAD Pakistan has told Washington that US forces must seal the Afghan border in the event of any offensive against the Al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network in North Waziristan, an official said on Saturday.
The Haqqanis, whose leaders are understood to be based in the Pakistani tribal district, is one of the thorniest issues between Islamabad and Washington.
“The Americans have been repeatedly told that they will have to seal off the border on the Afghan side whenever an operation is launched in North Waziristan,” a Pakistani security official said. Without protecting the porous, mountainous border, militants would simply escape into Afghanistan, where Pakistan has no writ, he said.
He claimed that Americans have “never been encouraging on this point” and accused them of failing to seal the border when operations were planned twice before in North Waziristan.
On August 3, The Wall Street Journal reported that Pakistani and US officials were considering joint counter-terrorism campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan against the Haqqanis and Taliban fighters who attack Pakistan. The paper said the campaigns would mark an upturn in cooperation after more than a year of rancorous relations and stamp out major threats facing each country.
Pakistani officials later denied any agreement with the US for a joint operation in North Waziristan, and said “routine” actions on each side of the border “should not be mistaken for ‘joint operations’”.
The official said Pakistan had been able to “speak their heart and mind” on the issue during last week’s visit to Washington by the Inter-Services Intelligence chief. Lieutenant General Zaheerul Islam, in the first such visit for a year, and CIA director David Petraeus discussed some of the most intractable issues on both sides that have fractured the anti-terror alliance.
“The Americans were clearly told that Pakistan will not allow American boots on its soil for any operation and whenever an offensive is launched, it will be done by us,” he said.
Agence France-Presse
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