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'Reports of Al Qaeda regrouping near border exaggerated'
Pakistan played down on Saturday US claims that Al Qaeda’s leadership has regrouped in tribal areas near its border with Afghanistan, saying such reports were “exaggerated”.
"Tut tut and tut! Mere exaggeration and hyperbooley!"
Many Al Qaeda members took refuge in North and South Waziristan bordering Afghanistan after US-led forces toppled the Taliban in 2001. Some US officials say these tribal areas remain safe havens for militants. “No, we do not agree,” General Ehsan-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff committee said when asked whether Al Qaeda’s leadership was regrouping in Pakistan near its border with Afghanistan.

“This is an exaggerated assessment of the presence of some foreign militants in the Waziristan area,” he told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of an Asian security conference in Singapore.

“To say that this is the regrouping of Al Qaeda is certainly over-exaggerated,” he said, adding that the US have their own assessment of the situation. He said Pakistan has taken steps to seal its borders with Afghanistan using troops and fences, adding that other defences, including mines along the border, were being considered.

“The strategy has been that there should be a dialogue with all tribesmen and they should be encouraged to evict foreign elements from their areas,” he said. “We feel that strategy has been very successful, because tribesmen who are fed up with the presence of foreigners in their areas have acted on their own against them.”
Posted by: Fred 2007-06-03
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=189882