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Evacuees from Buner district walk next to trucks loaded with their possessions on the outskirts of Peshawar - Source: Reuters
US President Barack Obama said that Pakistan's greatest threat
was internal, and not from long-time rival India, as Pakistan
troops took back a key town to halt a Taliban advance on the
capital.
Obama told a news conference that he was confident about the
security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and that the Pakistani army
recognised the threat the militants posed to the nation.
"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 said.
"And you're starting to see the Pakistani military take much more
seriously the armed threat from militant extremists."
Obama's comments came as Pakistani troops took the main town in
strategically important Buner Valley on Wednesday after they were
dropped by helicopter behind Taliban lines.
More than 50 militants were killed in the last two days, the
military said.
The Taliban's advance earlier this month into Buner, just 100 km
northwest of the capital, had sent shivers through Pakistan and
heightened fears in the United States that the nuclear-armed Muslim
state was becoming more unstable.
"We assure the nation that armed forces have the capability to ward
off any kind of threat," military spokesman Major-General Athar
Abbas told a news conference in Rawalpindi, the garrison town close
to the capital, Islamabad.
Pakistan used jet fighters at the start of the operation on
Tuesday, then deployed helicopter gunships which inflicted more
than 50 casualties, Abbas said.
One soldier was killed.
The Islamabad government's demonstration of military resolve may
reassure US President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid
Karzai when they meet Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in
Washington on May 6-7 to discuss strategy.
"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 said.
"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.
Stepping up aid
US lawmakers plan to accelerate the flow of more than $706 million
in aid to Pakistan to help with counterinsurgency operations,
contained in a much larger spending measure which also provides
funding for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The measure also includes US$1.4 billion in economic aid for
Islamabad.
Steny Hoyer, leader of the Democratic majority in the US House of
Representatives, told Reuters the chamber could vote in mid-May on
Obama's funding request.
US officials want to provide the aid as part of an effort to
reverse militant gains in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
General James Conway, the commandant of the US Marine Corps, said
Pakistan's top army officer was concerned that a planned increase
in US military operations in southern Afghanistan could cause
refugee flows into Pakistan.
He said General Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistani army chief, was also
worried more militants would be pushed into Pakistan and could
endanger supply lines for international forces in
Afghanistan.
But Conway said Kayani may be citing a worst-case scenario.
"Not everybody believes that's where the Taliban will flush to,"
Conway told reporters at the Pentagon. "In any event, we've got to
do what we've got to do in the south."
Separately, a US drone fired a missile into the major al Qaeda
sanctuary of South Waziristan, killing six militants in the latest
such attack by US forces in Pakistan's border areas with
Afghanistan.
The strike targeted a vehicle and two of the militants were
foreigners, an intelligence official said from the region.
Pakistani stocks lost more than two percent due to worries over
mounting insecurity.
Taliban fighters had held the entrances to the Buner valley, but
they risked being caught between security forces at their front and
rear after the successful airdrop.
"The airborne forces have linked up to police and Frontier
Constabulary in Daggar," the military spokesman said earlier. "A
link-up with ground forces is in progress."
Residents saw troops descend from helicopters outside Daggar, the
main town in Buner.
The military spokesman said the soldiers had freed 18 of some 70
police and militiamen abducted by militants on Tuesday.
The military estimated some 500 militants were in the Buner valley
of the North West Frontier Province; about 140 km southeast of the
Afghan border, and that it might take a week to clear them
out.
"It is very important psychologically, tactically and strategically
to make sure that Buner is cleared of these Taliban," said military
analyst Ikram Seghal.
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