[Al Arabiya Latest] Pakistan's military said Wednesday its troops seized control of the main town in the northwest region of Buner after fierce fighting with the Taliban as President Asif Ali Zardari called on citizens to put political differences aside and give their backing to the troops in the offensive."Time has come for the entire nation to give pause to their political differences and rise to the occasion and give full support to our security forces in this critical hour," Zardari said in a statement.
He said that nationwide support was critical in ensuring the protection of the rights of Pakistani citizens.
He said that nationwide support was critical in ensuring the protection of the rights of Pakistani citizens. "This is the only way to demonstrate our will, to keep Pakistan as a moderate, modern and democratic state where the rights of all citizens are protected," Zardari said. "The operation in Buner and Lower Dir is meant to re-establish the writ of the constitution," the president said.
Up to 500 Taliban militants entered Buner earlier this month and imposed sharia, Islamic law, in what the Pakistani military called a "violation" of an agreement struck earlier in the year with Islamists to bring peace to the region.
Full U.S. backing
The operation to flush out the rebels and prevent them gaining ground in the troubled country had the full backing of Washington, which has put Pakistan at the heart of the battle against terrorists and al-Qaeda militants.
U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking in Missouri, said al-Qaeda and the Taliban were the "single most direct threat" to U.S. national security.
Washington earlier hailed the military operations as "exactly the appropriate response" to halt the Taliban's advance in nuclear-armed Pakistan, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said.
In a February peace deal, the government agreed that sharia could be enforced in Swat and its surrounding districts in a bid to end two years of a bloody rebellion led by radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah.
But militants have not disarmed themselves as agreed in the deal with pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Mohammad, also the father-in-law of Fazlullah, and started occupying Buner and attacked troops in Lower Dir district.
Troops kill over 50 Taliban
On Wednesday Pakistani troops took the main town in strategically important Buner Valley after dropping by helicopter behind Taliban lines, killing more than 50 militants in two days, the military said.
A U.S. drone meanwhile fired a missile into another region, the major al-Qaeda sanctuary of South Waziristan, killing six militants in the latest such attack by U.S. forces in Pakistan's border areas with Afghanistan.
The Taliban's advance earlier this month into Buner, just 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the capital had sent shivers through Pakistan and heightened fears in the United States that the nuclear-armed Muslim state was becoming more unstable.
"We assure the nation that armed forces have the capability to ward off any kind of threat," military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas told a news conference in Rawalpindi, the garrison town close to the capital, Islamabad.
The Islamabad government's demonstration of military resolve will probably reassure and Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Obama when they meet Zardari in Washington on May 6-7 to discuss strategy.