US asks Pak to move quickly against militants in North Waziristan

NEW YORK - The United States is piling up immense pressure on Pakistan to take on the militants having terror training camps in the country’s ungoverned north western region, and has told the Pakistan Army to move more quickly in initiating a military offensive in the restive region, American and Pakistani officials said.

According to officials, the US military commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal met Pakistan Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in Islamabad and told him very clearly that Pakistan would have to move against the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in North Waziristan.

The Obama Administration is pushing Islamabad for a new military operation in North Waziristan since Faisal Shahzad, the American-Pakistani man accused of plotting the botched Times Square bombing, confessed that he received terror training in one of Pakistan’s most volatile region along the Afghanistan border.

The Times Square bombing plot has also given way to a raging debate with the Obama Administration about how to expand the American military’s influence, and even on-ground presence on Pakistani soil, The New York Times reports.

Officials,who are familiar with General McChrystal’s meeting with General Kayani, said the Pakistani military chief was specifically told that the country can no longer deny taking action against extremist groups based in terror hot bed of North Waziristan.

“You can’t pretend any longer that this is not going on. We are saying you have got to go into North Waziristan,” an official quoted General McChrystal as telling.

According to observers and experts, the United States is planning to use the failed New York terror attack to impress on the Pakistanis of the urgency of getting American development aid in place in the tribal areas where militancy thrives, and into Karachi, where radical religious schools, madrasas, are popular.

“The element of threat is definitely different from the last few months,” the newspaper quoted Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador who has also served in the United States, as saying.

“Last week’s incident makes it more urgent and more true of the need to bring stability and security to these areas where the militants have multiplied,” added another US official. (ANI)