 Pakistan's army on Friday warned tribesmen in the country's western border regions to give up protecting "terrorists" or face military action. "Although all tribes and sub-tribes of your agency have signed an agreement not to provide safe havens to the terrorists, credible intelligence reports suggest that a number of terrorists are still present there," Lieutenant-General Safdar Hussain said.
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Safdar, who heads the army's hunt for al Qaeda-linked militants in northwestern Pakistan, was speaking to tribal elders from North Waziristan region, an army statement said. "You must take tangible action against them otherwise the government will be left with no option but to launch a military action against them," he said at a meeting in Peshawar, capital of the North West Frontier Province, which borders Afghanistan.
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Last week Pakistani soldiers killed two foreign al Qaeda suspects and arrested 11 people in a remote village in North Waziristan, 300 km (185 miles) southwest of the capital, Islamabad. Officials say the sustained crackdown forced militants to flee to other areas inside Pakistan as well as to Afghanistan. But so far, the security forces have found no sign of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al Zawahri, who some experts say are somewhere in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. |