US Pentagon chief in Pakistan, Afghan in focus

Islamabad, Feb 12: US Defense Secretary Robert Gates landed in Islamabad to meet with President Pervez Musharraf as Pakistan faces mounting pressure to halt the flow of Taliban fighters across the border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan has been important in the resurgence of the Taliban, which has used border areas as safe havens and recruited from Afghan refugee camps.

US military officials have also said the Afghan insurgency's command operations came from the Pakistani side of the border and that training, financing, indoctrination, regeneration and other support activities were taking place there.

''We can't be successful unless Pakistan is part of the equation in eliminating this insurgency,'' said one NATO official ahead of Gates' trip.

While Islamabad agrees the refugee camps on its side of the border have become robust recruiting grounds for the Taliban, Pakistani officials reject blame for the rising violence in Afghanistan.

Musharraf has refused to take sole responsibility for the border and said the Taliban is Afghanistan's problem.

The Pakistani foreign minister on Saturday called for more help and less rhetoric from the United States to stop the flow of Taliban militants.

''Simply making a rhetorical appeal -- stop extremism -- if it were that simple it would have been resolved long ago in Palestine, in Lebanon and Iraq and in Afghanistan. Obviously it's more complicated,'' Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri told Reuters at a meeting in Munich on Saturday.

Gates traveled to Pakistan after four days of meetings in Spain and Germany focused in large part on the war in Afghanistan. Last year was Afghanistan's bloodiest since the US-led invasion in 2001 and the Taliban has promised a spring offensive of thousands of suicide bombers.

While NATO commanders and US officials increase pressure on Pakistan, many also say the Pakistani government has taken some steps to address the problem.

''It's just a fact that there's a sanctuary in Pakistan,'' said a senior U.S. defense official traveling with Gates. ''I think we give the government of Pakistan credit for asserting itself in many significant ways, many unprecedented ways, but clearly there's still a problem.''

Reuters