Pakistan tells US it's trying to secure Afghan border

QUETTA, Pakistan, June 14 (Reuters) Pakistan told a visiting US official today it was trying its best to plug its long, porous border with Afghanistan and denied Taliban leaders were hiding in Pakistan.

US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Richard Boucher flew over Pakistan's border with Afghanistan to get a first-hand look at Pakistani measures to control the wild frontier.

Boucher will be joined in Pakistan by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte on Friday and Saturday.

They are expected to meet President Pervez Musharraf, who is seeking re-election later this year and is facing the severest challenge to his authority since coming to power in a coup almost eight years ago.

The US officials are expected to praise Musharraf as an ally.

Western and Afghan forces have had a series of successes against senior Taliban figures in recent months, thanks in part to Pakistan's cooperation, though Islamabad is wary of taking any credit for fear of a backlash at home.

Cross-border incursions by the Taliban militants have long been a bone of contention between Pakistan and Afghanistan, two major US allies.

Afghan officials say most of the militants fighting an insurgency in their country come from sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the border.

Pakistan denies that, although US commanders in Afghanistan have also complained about Taliban command and control centres in Pakistan.

The Pakistan army's recent deployment of two extra brigades to patrol the border region has silenced some of the criticism.

In Baluchistan, Boucher met several of the Pakistani officials in charge of the effort to curb Taliban movement on the frontier.

''We are taking as many steps as possible to secure the border with Afghanistan,'' an official quoted the chief minister of Baluchistan province, Jam Mohammad Yusuf, as telling Boucher in the provincial capital, Quetta.

Yusuf also rejected Afghan accusations Taliban leaders were directing the Afghan insurgency from Quetta.

''There are no Taliban leaders in our province,'' theofficial quoted the chief minister as saying.

Pakistan has arrested hundreds of al Qaeda militants andhanded many of them over to the United States since joining the US-led war on terrorism following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

The visiting US officials are expected to discuss a crisis caused by General Musharraf's attempt to oust the Supreme Court Chief Justice three months ago.

The judiciary, the media and opposition parties have rallied to the judge's cause as Pakistan's political temperature hots up ahead of elections.

But Boucher and other officials have already spoken of Washington's desire for polls due at the end of the year to be ''free and fair'', and for the judicial crisis to be settled through the courts.

Yesterday, Boucher met Election Commission officials and leaders of government and opposition parties, as well as the Vice Chief of Army Staff General Ahsan Saleem Hyat and Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri.

REUTERS GP BD2215