In a major catch, Pakistani authorities on Saturday nabbed a top militant suspected of beheading the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.
Pakistan allowed the US to conduct limited operations in its territory against Al Qaeda and Taliban militants during the reign of former president Pervez Musharraf, ex-foreign minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri has said. "Pakistan had allowed the US to conduct limited operations," Kasuri, a close confidant of Musharraf, told Geo News channel in an interview.
United States President George W Bush has secretly given the go ahead to American special forces to carry out ground attacks inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the country's government.American officials were quoted as saying that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission.
The Pakistani intelligence agency ISI knows the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, but is keeping his location a secret and wants to use the Al Qaeda chief as leverage over the US as it is wary of America's closer ties with India, noted military historian Stephen Tanner has said.
Addressing 6,000 journalists of colour at the Unity Convention in Chicago on Sunday afternoon, Barack Obama spoke of the need for the US government to engage with the Pakistan government in a bigger way, so that the sanctuaries for Al Qaeda and Taliban in Pakistan can be dealt with effectively.
The United States has announced the appointment of a new commander of its forces in Afghanistan as it now starts sending an additional 21,000 troops to this war-torn country to fight against the Taliban and the Al Qaeda. "McKiernan was asked to resign," Gates told reporters at a Pentagon press conference. Both the White House and the Defense Department said the changes in the top US military leadership has been taken in view of US President Barack Obaama's new Af-Pak policy.
The warning came during US official Richard Boucher's fourth visit in a year.
Terrorism was a serious threat to Pakistan's peace, security and development, said Musharraf.
Minister of State for Information Tariq Azim told private Geo television channel that the condition was ripe for emergency and the government is seriously considering the measure, which however has not been imposed so far.
Amid differences with America on the issue of drone attacks against high-value terrorist targets on it soil, Pakistan on Tuesday said it would not give any "blank cheques" to the United States and not accept foreign troops in its territory in the ongoing war to root out the Al-Qaeda and Taliban.
Resolving the Kashmir issue between India and Pakistan is key to stability in South Asia, where all terror groups including the Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and the Jaish-e-Muhammed are "working much more closely together" now than a year ago, top US military commander Mike Mullen has said.
In a bid to address the rise of Al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, United States President Barack Obama's maiden budget has proposed more military aid to the two countries. US military aid to Pakistan has remained a matter of intense discussion, however, the Congressmen this time are pitching to increase non-military aid by linking it with Islamabad's success in the fight against terrorism. The budget also seeks to increase the non-military aid.
The new civilian and military strategy in Afghanistan, which was endorsed at the NATO meeting, would be incomplete without the full co-operation of surrounding states including Pakistan, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on the last day of his four-day visit to China.
"They've got elections coming up, but effectively the national government (led by Hamid Karzai) seems very detached from what's going on in the surrounding community," Obama said, clearly expressing his displeasure over the functioning of the Afghan President, considered close to former President George W Bush.
Musharraf meets US commander over Afghan allegations
The deal was agreed between the government and more than 280 tribal elders and terrorists in North Waziristan last month, The Daily Telegraph reported, quoting a government official in Peshawar.
US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher announced the assistance after holding talks with Musharraf.
Armitage, appearing in a Brookings Institution discussion on 'The US-Pakistan Strategic Relationship', said, "I have gone my whole career desperately wanting to tell somebody that I would bomb them into the Stone Age and I have never been able to do it because I have never been authorised to do it."
Significantly the meeting of Pakistan's envoys included its Ambassador from Iran, which according to recent reports has begun building a concrete wall along its border crossings.
The American troops have take a recourse to existing mechanism to discuss and address the issues, relating to law and order on border areas
Chaudiri Abdul Majeed and Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who held a series of senior posts in Pakistani nuke programme, went to Taliban headquarters in Kandahar in mid-August 2001 and spent three days with bin Laden who was keen on acquiring weapons of mass destruction, the book says.
Bad weather had forced Cheney to stay overnight at the base during a surprise visit for talks on the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claims that ISI got hold of bin Laden in 2006 after paying bribes to some of the tribal leaders
Rescuers retrieved more bodies on Sunday from the burnt-out shell of the bombed Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, pushing the death toll from one of the worst terrorist attacks in the country to at least 60, including the Czech ambassador and an American.
Karzai told CBS television network that he had recently delivered the message privately to President George W Bush.
The Pakistan government has, however, put the JuD on the list of groups being closely watched by the officials.
India has submitted a formal request to the United Nations Committee 1267, seeking inclusion of the name of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar on the sanctions' list, said government sources.
The US defence department chose to sidestep queries on whether it had the authority to carry out unilateral action against Taliban or al Qaeda leadership on Pakistani soil but pressed Islamabad to "move rapidly" against the militants in its restive tribal areas.
Musharraf has been thrashed by members of the US Congress, leading analysts, and leading newspapers who have questioned his fidelity to the global war on terror.
Security at sensitive installations, including places of worship, airports, government offices and international missions, has been beefed up.
The country's volatile tribal areas were turned into virtual killing fields in three different suicide attacks.
All major terrorist networks have a safe haven in Pakistan to operate, creating a big "problem" to the United States' war against terror, Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said.
The US has recently announced that Pakistan could buy the F-16 aircraft and the officials would work out the modalities.
The safe haven provided to al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the alliances among the extremist groups in Pakistan, is not just a threat to the stability of the Pakistani government, but also a threat to stability in Afghanistan, and a much broader threat to the region and America, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said.
India said perhaps the Permanent Representative of Pakistan is "not aware that Osama bin Laden was hiding in their own country in plain sight, and it is the US forces which got him inside Pakistan. Nor have they heard their Prime Minister refer to Osama bin Laden as a martyr."
The question really is whether the US can be persuaded to embark on a path of calibrated and stronger sanctions on Pakistan.
The failure of the Pakistani police and security agencies to gather sufficient evidence has led to the release of a large number of dreaded terrorists of outfits such as Al Qaeda and Taliban, who are known to have participated in major attacks in Pakistan, a report said.What is more worrying is that most of them have vanished into thin air soon after their release and were probably planning or participating in more attacks, the report said.
Pakistan represents 'strategic depth' in Mullah Omar's war with the US, then a staging camp for the conquest of India.
In India, the anniversary of 26/11 comes and goes with only the bare minimum of remembrance. We don't even bother very much about honouring those who acted with great bravery that day, rues Vir Sanghvi.
