US incursion talk unhelpful: Pakistan Governor

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

Washington, Aug 2: Talk by US officials and Democratic presidential candidate Sn. Barack Obama on striking against al Qaeda targets on Pakistani territory undermine Pakistan's fight against militants, a senior official from the beleaguered American ally said.

Governor Owais Ahmed Ghani of Baluchistan, a southwest Pakistani province that shares a long border with Afghanistan, said such remarks play badly in Pakistan and could backfire ''It sends a very bad signal to our public back home and they become very agitated over it and that puts pressure on the government and I think it doesn't help,'' he said in Washington in response to campaign remarks by Obama yesterday.

Speaking amid debate in Washington over what to do about a resurgent al Qaeda and Taliban in areas of northwest Pakistan, Obama said if elected in November 2008 he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government.

Ghani said the feeling in his frontline, Muslim country was that ''We've had to pay a big price'' in hundreds of fallen soldiers and multiple terror attacks as it has backed the US fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda.

''If that is the sort of appreciation you get, then why bother at all?'' the governor told Reuters in an interview.

Pakistan has bristled at statements from US officials suggesting the US military would not rule out attacks in Pakistan. The remarks followed the release last month of unclassified excerpts of a major US intelligence report that concluded the United States faces a heightened threat from al Qaeda in part because of the Pakistan safe haven.

Ghani said the government of President Pervez Musharraf has ''since 9/11 developed a huge capacity for intelligence operations (and) in problem areas, we have saturated them with troops.''

Afghanistan Gaps Blamed

The problem was in Afghanistan, which he said had released militants caught and repatriated by Pakistan. Kabul also resisted Pakistan plans to tighten border controls, he said.

''There are a lot of open spaces and gaps in the deployment in Afghanistan which is enabling these terrorists to function and reorganize themselves,'' said Ghani.

Baluchistan, Pakistan's largest and most sparsely populated province, shares a rugged and porous 1,200-km border with Afghanistan. It also borders Iran and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, where US intelligence has speculated that al Qaeda may be regrouping.

Ghani said the notion that al Qaeda was in that area is ''not possible with the type of saturated deployment that we have there, but it is very much possible in Afghanistan, where there are huge gaps.'' Pakistan has 80,000 troops deployed in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and another 40,000 soldiers bordering that region, compared to 40,000 Afghan troops in the entire country of Afghanistan, said Ghani.

Ghani's Baluchistan province, which a year ago put down a violent tribal uprising, has ''normalized'' and recently signed a joint venture with firms from Canada and Chile to develop the world's fifth largest copper mine, he said.

''There is no organized Taliban in Baluchistan -- no base camps, no training camps, no ammo dumps, nothing. However individuals do sneak across,'' he said, acknowledging that there were Taliban sympathizers among the one million Afghan refugees in the province.

Reuters>

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