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Armed members of the Pakistani Taliban walk on a street in the Buner district, about 100 km northwest of Islamabad - Source: Reuters -
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US President Barack Obama says Pakistan's army is beginning to realise that homegrown militants and not India posed the biggest threat to the country's stability, after Pakistani troops retook a key town from Taliban gunmen.
Obama told a news conference in Washington on Wednesday he was confident about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and that the Pakistani army recognised the dangers of weapons falling into the wrong hands.
"On the military side, you're starting to see some recognition just in the last few days that the obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan has been misguided, and that their biggest threat right now comes internally," he says.
"And you're starting to see the Pakistani military take much more seriously the armed threat from militant extremists."
His comments came after Pakistani troops took the main town in the strategically important Buner Valley on Wednesday after they were dropped by helicopter behind Taliban lines. More than 50 militants were killed on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Pakistani military says.
The Taliban's entry into Buner, just 100km from the capital
Islamabad, from their stronghold in neighbouring Swat valley,
unnerved many Pakistanis and raised fears in Washington that its
nuclear-armed ally was becoming more unstable.
Before the military offensive in Buner, Western allies, who need
Pakistan's support to defeat al Qaeda and stabilise neighbouring
Afghanistan, were worried the government seemed too willing to
appease militants.
The militants' advance came after the civilian government caved in
to demands for Islamic sharia law in parts of the northwest region,
not far from Afghanistan.
"I am gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan, not
because I think that they're immediately going to be overrun and
the Taliban would take over in Pakistan," Obama says.
"I'm more concerned that the civilian government there right now is
very fragile and don't seem to have the capacity to deliver basic
services: schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that
works for the majority of the people.
Obama is due to hold talks with Pakistani President Asif Ali
Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai on May 6-7.
Hundreds of thousands of Pakistani troops are deployed on the
eastern border with India, and Islamabad has come under pressure
from Washington to move troops to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda
militants on its western flank along the border with
Afghanistan.
"We want to respect their sovereignty, but we also recognise that
we have huge strategic interests, huge national security interests
in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don't end up
having a nuclear-armed militant state," Obama says.
On Tuesday, the Pakistan military used jet fighters at the start of
the operation against the Taliban in Buner, then deployed
helicopter gunships. One soldier has been killed.
The Pakistani military estimated some 500 militants were in the
Buner valley and that it might take a week to clear them out. It
has said a few hundred militants in the mountains never posed a
real threat to the capital.
But some security analysts say the Taliban could have used Buner as
a jumping off point to strike at Tarbela, a major dam that provides
crucial water and electricity supplies to a large part of the
country, before setting their sights on Islamabad.
In Washington, US lawmakers say they plan to accelerate the flow of
more than $400 million in aid to Pakistan to help with
counterinsurgency operations. The US is also giving $1.4 billion in
economic aid for Islamabad.
