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Pakistan’s border controls are ‘real concern’: US

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Pakistan's security controls on its border with Afghanistan are a “real concern'” for the US, the State Department said on Tuesday, following an attack two days ago that killed nine US soldiers at a camp near the frontier, according to a Bloomberg report.

“There is a deep concern about cross-border infiltration into Afghanistan and then back [across] the border,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told a briefing in Washington on Monday. Pakistan understands “the importance of engaging in the counter-terrorism fight”, he added. The soldiers were killed in Kunar province in north-eastern Afghanistan, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said in a statement. A group of about 200 gunmen raided a US post in the deadliest attack on US forces in Afghanistan in three years, the Associated Press reported.

The Pakistan government says it is combating extremism through the selective use of force and a strategy of economic and political development in the tribal regions. The US and NATO say Pakistan's policy of holding talks with militants in the Tribal Areas has led to increased attacks by Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.

Twenty-eight coalition soldiers were killed in June in the deadliest month for the US-led forces in Afghanistan since the conflict began in 2001, the US Defence Department said earlier this month. Terrorist incidents in eastern Afghanistan were 50 percent higher in April than the same month last year, according to NATO. NATO and US commanders are trying to address border security with Pakistan's army, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said in Washington on Monday, according to the American Forces Press Service.

“There have been a number of discussions in recent weeks,”' Whitman said, adding, “Those will continue as we try to address the border region in a comprehensive way.” Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Pakistani leaders on July 12 in Islamabad to discuss the frontier. President Pervez Musharraf, a key US ally in the fight against terrorism, deployed more than 100,000 soldiers in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to combat Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists crossing the 2,430-kilometer border with Afghanistan, the report says. The US has given Pakistan $10 billion in mostly military aid since September 11, 2001, with the aim of securing the nuclear-armed country against Al Qaeda. NATO and US intelligence agencies say the terrorist network uses bases in Pakistan's Tribal Areas to train, re-arm and plan attacks against troops in Afghanistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday blamed Pakistan's intelligence agencies for being behind recent attacks by militants. Pakistan has repeatedly denied any involvement, saying it wants to work with Afghanistan to defeat terrorism. “No one should indulge in a blame game, [but should] rather fight this menace jointly,” Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said last week in Malaysia.

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