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Gates cautions Pakistan on deal with insurgents

* US defence secretary says peace deals with Taliban by previous govt didn’t work out

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday that Pakistan should be wary of holding talks with he local Taliban.

He told the British Broadcasting Company that earlier efforts to negotiate with the militants had not worked out.

Speaking in Delhi, Gates said the February 18 polls had been bad for President Pervez Musharraf, but the US hoped to continue working with him. Opposition parties are uniting to form Pakistan’s next government after faring well in the last week’s polls. President Pervez Musharraf’s allies fared poorly.

He described Musharraf as the elected president of Pakistan. Gates said a new government would have to face the reality that Al Qaeda militants and insurgents were operating along the frontier.

Didn’t work out: “Even the Musharraf government tried talking and doing deals in Waziristan. That didn’t work out very well. Maybe this new government in Pakistan will have to go through the same experience itself,” he said.

President Musharraf was re-elected to the presidency last year in a parliamentary vote boycotted by opposition parties as ‘unconstitutional’.

The former general has been a key US ally in the “war on terror” but his domestic popularity has plummeted amid accusations of incompetence and authoritarianism.

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