 |
| |
WEEKLY
SECTIONS |
 |
 |
 |
|
| More US troops for Pak-Afghan border |
|
|
|
Monday, November 24, 2008
Nato says cooperation with Pakistan ‘best ever’
KABUL: A brigade of 3,500 to 4,000 extra US troops due in Afghanistan in January will be deployed in the east amid efforts to stop infiltration of militants from Pakistan, the US military said on Sunday.
The brigade has been approved as part of requested US troop reinforcements for Afghanistan’s fight against extremists that could amount to about 20,000 personnel, US military spokesman Colonel Greg Julian told reporters in Kabul. “The first brigade that is coming will go into the (NATO-led) RC-East (Regional Command East) and they are going to move into areas that are currently not covered,” Julian said.
The area includes about a dozen provinces, many of which are on the border with Pakistan where Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other militants are said to have training camps and safe havens. Guards along the porous border are being trained and 165 border posts are being built as part of a drive to stop militants entering Afghanistan, Julian said.
“We recognise that there are certain lines or avenues that the insurgents come through (from Pakistan) and we are focusing our efforts on those,” he said. International and Afghan troops along with counterparts in Pakistan this month launched “Operation Lionheart” along the border.
“This operation will help to deny the enemies of Afghanistan safe havens in Pakistan,” Brigadier General Richard Blanchette, spokesman for a NATO-led force working alongside the US-led coalition and Afghan army, told the briefing. Julian said the top US commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, has asked for three combat brigades along with support elements such as intelligence and air power, which could altogether amount to 20,000 personnel.
“However, they are dependent on the security situation in Iraq improving enough so those forces can be made available, and upon the agreement of the Afghan government,” he said. Meanwhile, NATO-led troops killed a senior Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan, the military alliance said in a statement. Mullah Assad was a senior Taliban operational commander for southern Helmand province, and was killed in an operation on Wednesday, NATO said. US-led forces said they had killed an Afghan civilian in a battle that also left two militants dead, as 26 other Taliban-linked rebels were reported killed in separate clashes. Another four civilians, at least two of them female, were wounded in the battle in the southern province of Zabul on Thursday. Afghan and coalition forces killed 17 insurgents in airstrikes in the southern province of Kandahar late Saturday, another statement said.
Meanwhile Nato said on Sunday cooperation between its troops in Afghanistan and the Pakistani army was the best it had ever been, as the two forces hit Taliban insurgents in a coordinated operation from both sides of the border.
Tension has risen between Pakistan and Western forces in Afghanistan in recent months over increased US missile strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants on the Pakistani side of the mountainous, porous border.
But operations launched by Nato forces in Afghanistan’s north-eastern Kunar province and by Pakistani troops in the adjacent Bajaur district on the other side of the border represented a new level of cooperation, the spokesman said. “The cooperation with the Pakistani forces is the best it has ever been,” said Brigadier General Richard Blanchette, spokesman for Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.
The cooperation was the result of tripartite meetings between ISAF, the Afghan military and Pakistani forces, he said. “This is not only a cooperation in the execution. This is also a cooperation that has happened in the planning,” Blanchette said.
|
|
|
| Back
| Send
this story to Friend | Print
Version |
|
|
‘Al-Qaeda, Taliban leaders not in Pakistan’
ISLAMABAD: Strongly reacting to some of the reports of the presence of al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership in Pakistan by the US newspapers and some intelligence agencies, President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday said more |
|
|
Mulla Omar in Karachi, claims WT
WASHINGTON: Mulla Muhammed Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, has fled Quetta and found refuge from the potential US attacks in Karachi with the assistance of Pakistan’s intelligence, the Washington Times more |
|
|
Will PM intervene or will robber barons kill CCP?
By Mehtab Haider
ISLAMABAD: The Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) has warned that it will cease to exist and its actions will become invalid in case the government fails to re-promulgate the Competition Ordinance on or b more |
|
|
Eight militants die in US drone attack
By our correspondent
MIRAMSHAH: Eight militants were killed and two others injured when a US drone hit a house in the Michikhel area in North Waziristan on Friday, the second such attack in less than 24 hours.
Tribal sources sai more |
|
|
19 militants killed in SWA, Khyber, Bajaur clashes
By our correspondents
WANA/BARA/KHAR: Nineteen militants were killed in clashes with security forces in South Waziristan, Khyber and Bajaur tribal regions on Friday.
Tribal and officials sources said five militants were kille more |
|
|
|
Pakistan has nothing to fear from India: Singh
WASHINGTON: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said India is ready to resolve all outstanding issues with the country on the condition that it will not allow its territory to be used against its neighbour more |
|
|
|
Qureshi wants result-oriented dialogue with India
MULTAN: Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mehmud Qureshi said on Friday Pakistan wanted meaningful and result-oriented bilateral negotiations with India.
Addressing a press conference at the airport here, h more |
|
|
|
Only 15 pc believe Pakistan is going right
By Gibran Peshimam
KARACHI: Pakistan’s youths are losing confidence in the future and a mere 15 per cent believe that the country is heading in the right direction, while 72 per cent feel economically worse off than a year ago. O more |
|
|
|
Mustafa Jatoi passes away
ISLAMABAD: Former caretaker prime minister Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi breathed his last at the St Marry Hospital in London on Friday after a protracted illness. He was 78.
He leaves behind six sons and three d more |
|
|
|
Slaughter of animals, NRO beneficiaries begins on Eid
By Muhammad Ahmad Noorani
ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) will soon announce its strategy to deal with the cases which are going to reopen on Nov 28, a NAB spokesman told The News on Friday.
“The NAB chairman more |
|
|
|
WFP, Rescue 15 attacks’ mastermind arrested
By Shakeel Anjum
ISLAMABAD: The Capital Police on Friday arrested the mastermind behind the attacks on the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the Rescue 15 offices in Islamabad.
The terrorist, identified as Jamshed Ahmad more |
|
|
|
Mushahid asks Karzai not to allow use of Afghan land against Pakistan
By our correspondent
ISLAMABAD: Secretary General Pakistan Muslim League-Q Mushahid Hussain Sayed on Friday asked President Hamid Karzai not to allow the use of Afghan land against Pakistan under Indian designs.
“Pakistan wa more |
|
|
|
No Indo-Pak FMs meeting: Nirupama
NEW DELHI: India on Friday said no meeting had been scheduled between foreign ministers of Pakistan and India in Port of Spain later this month on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting ( more |
|
|
|
US to tighten control of Afghan contracts: Gates
HALIFAX: US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday that the United States must tighten control of Afghan development contracts as a first step towards stemming rampant corruption.
“The reality is more |
|
|
|
China has stake in Kashmir: Mirwaiz
News Desk
HELD SRINAGAR: As he plans to visit China, Hurriyat Conference leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on Friday kicked up a controversy by saying that Beijing has a “direct link” with the Kashmir issue, drawing strong obje more |
|
|
|
Clinton favours Indo-Pak dialogue on Kashmir
WASHINGTON: The United States is encouraging Pakistan and India to resume their dialogue to address Kashmir and other outstanding disputes but any solution must come from the two countries, Secretary of State H more |
|
|
|
Competition Commission forces PIA to fly fair
By our correspondent
ISLAMABAD: Silent prayers of many Hajis have apparently been answered as the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) has ordered PIA to refund within 60 days the excessive fares charged from the passengers, wh more |
|
|
|
Attack on policemen in Peshawar
By Javed Aziz Khan
PESHAWAR: The death toll in the bomb attack on police party in Yakatoot rose to three after a sub-inspector and another cop succumbed to injuries at the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) on Friday as the city mourned more |
|
|
|
‘Musharraf funnelling money to improve image’
ISLAMABAD: Former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf has reportedly funnelled a large amount of money to his former aides in the country in order to improve his image, as he is planning a return to the c more |
|
|
|
Sen Lugar’s wife arrested, charged with drinking, hit-and-run
News Desk
WASHINGTON: The wife of Republican Senator Richard G Lugar was arrested in the suburb of McLean on Wednesday night after crashing into a parked car, and she was charged with drunk driving and hit-and-run, the F more |
|
|
|
briefs...
Bombers kill 23 in Afghanistan
HERAT: Bomb attacks on Friday killed 23 people in Afghanistan, a deadly start to President Hamid Karzai’s second term that underscored spiralling insecurity nine years into more |
|
|
|
ISSN 1563-9479 
