Arrests of suspected Taliban mount in Pakistan

QUETTA, Pakistan, July 19 (Reuters) Pakistani police mounted more raids today to catch suspected Taliban fighters living in and around the city of Quetta, and more than 200 Afghans have been arrested in the last three days, police said.

Afghanistan, the United States and NATO powers with forces in Afghanistan have beseeched Pakistan to take firmer action against Taliban who settled in Baluchistan province after being ousted from their homeland by U S -backed forces in late 2001.

Baluch police rejected suspicions that the arrests were little more than window-dressing, and Afghans were being rounded up regardless of whether or not they fought with the Taliban.

''The target is Taliban. There is no ambiguity in it,'' Salman Saeed, the deputy police chief for Baluchistan province, told Reuters, though many of those arrested were picked up for not possessing proper identity papers.

Afghanistan welcomed this new show of resolve in Pakistan, although Siamak Herawe, a press official at the presidential palace in Kabul chose his words carefully.

''There may be migrants or Taliban among those arrested. The government expects Pakistan to use precision to not arrest migrants,'' Herawe told Reuters. Yesterday alone, police arrested at least 109 Afghans in raids in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, and police said most of them had taken part in fighting with Taliban forces across the border in Afghanistan.

''Now the total numbers of arrested Afghans are over 200 and most of them are Taliban who were active in fighting in their country,'' Chaudhry Mohammad Yaqub, Baluchistan's police chief, told Reuters.

''They were arrested initially under the Foreigners Act, but after the court's decision we'll hand them over to Afghan authorities,'' Yaqub said, referring to an immigration law.

The operation would be expanded to cover the border areas of Dalbandin, Zhob and Chaman, where there is a heavy Afghan presence, he added.

Rahimullah Yusufzai, a newspaper editor and expert on tribal and Afghan affairs, was sceptical about the seriousness of the crackdown as it did not appear to have been carried out on the basis of specific intelligence.

''There appears to be no specific target in this crackdown. I think it is a routine sweep by police, who quite often round up people,'' Yusufzai said.

SENSITIVITY The Baluch government, a coalition that includes pro-Taliban Islamist parties, ordered the crackdown at the weekend, and the issue is one of great sensitivity in Pakistan.

Close to 700,000 Afghans live in Baluchistan. Most of them flooded into the region to escape fighting in their homeland during the past quarter-century.

One of the men caught was identified as Mullah Hamdullah Achakzai, who had been a low-ranking commander of Taliban forces in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand when the Islamists ruled the country. He was caught with five comrades.

Pakistan's past hesitancy in taking action stemmed from its support for the Taliban prior to al Qaeda's attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

Fear of upsetting Pashtun tribes sympathetic to the Taliban, and reluctance to risk more instability in Baluchistan, where Baluch tribal chiefs are in revolt against central government rule, are the other reasons why Pakistan has trod carefully.

REUTERS SY VV1753