US finalises three-phased cross-border raids into Pak: Report

The US has firmed up an “aggressive” three-phase plan to conduct cross-border raids into Pakistan from Afghanistan to strike at the elusive Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders believed to be hiding in the tribal region, a media report said today.
Last week’s “snatch and grab” raid by helicopter-borne US Special Operations forces in Pakistan was not an isolated incident but part of a three-phase plan, approved by President Bush, to strike at al-Qaeda’s top leadership, the National Public Radio (NPR) reported.

The plan calls for a much more aggressive military campaign, it quoted a source familiar with presidential order, which allowed the US military to conduct the raids, as saying.

The plan represents an 11th-hour effort to hammer al-Qaeda more aggressively as the Bush administration’s term ends in January next, two officials were quoted as saying.
“Definitely, the gloves have come off,” said a source who has been briefed on the plan. “This was only Phase 1 of three phases.”

Pentagon and White House officials have declined to discuss the new plan. The intelligence community already had approval from Bush to carry out operations inside Pakistan, which included attacks by Predator drones, the report said.

The latest US move has caused much concern in Islamabad with Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in an unusually strong public statement recently, vowing to defend the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity “at all cost”.

The NPR report also said that CIA personnel from around the world were being pulled into the Afghan-Pak border area, an intelligence-community “surge” to go after bin Laden and other al-Qaeda figures.

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress this week that he is drafting a new military strategy for both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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Zardari to discuss Al-Qaeda conflict in Britain

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zardari, will discuss the conflict with Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants in the northern tribal areas with British leaders this week, officials said on Sunday.

Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto who was sworn-in as president last week, will meet British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Tuesday before heading to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly session.

“It is a private visit but the president will meet the British prime minister,” foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq told AFP.

Pakistani state media said that Zardari would hold talks on “the emerging situation on the troubled Pakistan-Afghanistan border.”

“Pakistan would convey to the Britain that it has done more in the war on terror than others,” the Associated Press of Pakistan quoted Pakistan’s ambassador to London Wajid Shamsul Hassan as saying.

The Pakistani government is facing a growing domestic backlash after missile strikes targeting Al-Qaeda or Taliban militants in the tribal areas in recent weeks which have allegedly killed civilians.

The attacks have been blamed on US-led coalition forces or CIA drones based in Afghanistan.

Washington says Pakistan’s mountainous tribal regions have become a safe haven for Islamic fighters waging an insurgency in Afghanistan, and for Al-Qaeda leaders plotting global terror attacks.

But the increasingly frequent missile attacks, for which the United States has not claimed responsibility, are straining Pakistan’s relationship with its key allies.

Civilian deaths have stirred local anger and embarrassed the Pakistani government, already struggling to tackle the militancy that has seen 1,200 of its own people die in bombings and suicide attacks in the past year alone.

Pakistan’s army, itself engaged in fierce clashes against militants linked to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in the border regions, has also condemned what it sees as unilateral US action that violates the country’s sovereignty.

Zardari, who flew to his former exile home in Dubai on Friday, is expected to land in London later Sunday.