No hesitation in hitting Qaeda targets: Biden

Washington, Jan 26: Joseph R Biden, the Vice-President of United States has reiterated President Barack Obama's campaign stand that he would not hesitate to attack actionable targets 'of high-level al-Qaeda personnel' inside Pakistan. He was appearing in the Face The Nation programme of CBS channel. Biden also declined to respond to a question whether the United States would notify Pakistan before any cross-border movements for action in its territory.

When asked about last week drone attack on al Qaeda force in Pak, Biden said, "I can't speak to any particular attack. I can't speak to any particular action. It's not appropriate for me to do that. But I can say that the president of the United States said during his campaign and in the debates that if there is an actionable target, of a high-level al Qaeda personnel, that he would not hesitate to use action to deal with that, " Biden added.

Biden who visited Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq as a Senator earlier said that in his last trip he witnessed more co-operation going on now between the Pakistan military and in its tribal areas that has been ungovernable for the Pakistani government.

Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) -- "Waziristan, North Waziristan -- all that area we hear about, that is really sort of ungovernable. Not sort of, it's been ungovernable for the Pakistani government," Biden said.

"That's where the bad guys are hiding. That's where the Al Qaida folks are, and some other malcontents."

"And so what we're doing is we're in the process of working with the Pakistanis to help train up their counterinsurgency capability of their military, and we're getting new agreements with them about how to deal with cross-border movements of these folks, so we're making progress."

In Afghanistan too "things are going to get tougher before they get better," Biden said.

What's happened, he said, is that because of a "failure to provide sufficient resources, economic, political and military," the situation has deteriorated a great deal and "Taliban is in effective control of significant parts of the country they were not before."

"So the bottom line here is, we've inherited a real mess. We're about to go in and try to essentially reclaim territory that's been effectively lost," he said. "And all of that means we're going to be engaging the enemy more now."

Asked if more American casualties should be expected, Biden said, "I hate so say it, but yes, I think there will be. There will be an uptick."

OneIndia News "(With inputs from Agencies)