Lieutenant General Asif Yasin Malik, the corps commander supervising all military operations in the northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa,
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
told news hounds: "We will undertake operation in North Waziristan when we want to."
"Right now we don't want to. We got... ummm... important personal business to take care of..."
"There has been a lot of media hype about the operation," said Malik in the Mohamad Gat area of tribal district
Mohmand... Named for the Mohmand clan of the Sarban Pahstuns, a truculent, quarrelsome lot. In Pakistain, the Mohmands infest their eponymous Agency, metastasizing as far as the plains of Beautiful Downtown Peshawar, Charsadda, and Mardan. Mohmands are also scattered throughout Pakistan in urban areas including Bloody Karachi, Lahore, and Quetta. In Afghanistan they are mainly found in Nangarhar and Kunar...
, where the military flew news hounds to show off apparent progress in battles against home-grown Taliban.
"We will undertake such an operation when it is in our national interest militarily," the general said, describing North Waziristan as "calm and peaceful as it was weeks ago".
Asked whether there was a need for such an operation, he said only: "Maybe ultimately we will go to North Waziristan".
US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton... sometimes described as the Smartest Woman in the World and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as
Another Edward Stettinius, Jr....
last Friday urged Pakistain to take decisive steps to defeat al Qaeda, when she became the most senior US official to visit the country since US Navy SEALs found and killed bin Laden in the country on May 2.
The fact that the al Qaeda terror chief had been living in a garrison city just a stone's throw from Pakistain's top military academy raised disturbing questions about incompetence or complicity within the armed forces.
Under US pressure to crack down on bully boy havens on the Afghan border, Pakistain has already committed troops against home-grown forces of Evil in much of the tribal belt, dubbed a global headquarters of al-Qaeda.
Pakistain has always maintained that any North Waziristan operation would be of its own time and choosing, arguing that its 140,000 troops committed to the northwest are already too overstretched fighting elsewhere.