Says main target to be Taliban, not Haqqani network
WASHINGTON: US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta on Monday said the Pakistan Army recently indicated to begin combat operations soon in the North Waziristan Agency.
Talking to a news agency, he said he did not know when the Pakistani operation would start, but he understood it would be in the near future, and that the main target would be the Pakistani Taliban, rather than the Haqqani Network.
“They’ve talked about it for a long time. Frankly, I’d lost hope that they were going to do anything about it. But it does appear that they in fact are going to take that step,” he added. He said Pakistan’s military leadership gave word of the planned operation in recent conversations with the top American commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen.
Panetta also revealed that the US was providing additional military assistance to peacekeeping forces in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in order to strengthen security in the region. But he said so far the Pentagon had not moved to send additional US troops to the Sinai.
“We just want to make sure that we know how those forces are deployed in order to ensure that we can more effectively go after those terrorists that would try to create an incident or terrorist act,” Panetta said.
It should be mentioned here that a week ago, some reports did take rounds that joint operations had been discussed during Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lt Gen Zahirul Islam’s meetings with the CIA and US military officials in his Washington visit.
A report also said Gen John Allen, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, too discussed the matter during a meeting with the Pakistan Army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in Rawalpindi last week.
However, Pakistan’s military leadership declared all such reports baseless, saying it was not mounting joint operations with the US against the Haqqani fighters holed up in North Waziristan Agency, and it alone would decide when to conduct campaigns within Pakistani territory.“Coordinated actions on the respective side of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, being part of routine, should not be mistaken for joint operations,” the military official said.
