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Pakistan bombards Taliban hideouts

Pak militant chief suspends talks

AP, AFP, Khyber Agency
Pakistani forces bombarded suspected militant hideouts with mortar shells yesterday as the government launched a major offensive against Taliban fighters threatening the main city in the country's volatile northwest, officials said.
The offensive in the Khyber tribal region marked the first major military’ action Pakistan’s newly elected government has taken against the militants operating in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.
The government had said it preferred to try to defuse tension with the groups through negotiations, but with threats by Islamic militants to the city of Peshawar growing in recent weeks, the mili-
tary decided to take action. Khyber also is a key route for moving US military supplies into neighbour-ingAfghanistan.
By Saturday afternoon, the paramilitary Frontier Corps began shelling suspected militant hideouts in the mountains in Khyber, said local official Muhammad SiddiqKhan.
The leader of the Taliban in Pakistan said Saturday he is suspending peace talks with the government because of the offensive. Baitullah Mehsud said he is freezing the talks until a final decision is made by his movement's executive council.
"We are suspending peace talks with the government because the government is constantly using force against us," he told AFP from
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his stronghold of South Waziristan neighbouring Afghanistan.
"The government is not showing any seriousness and is using force against us. But if the government takes any military action we are also ready for martyrdom," Mehsud said.
Fasih Ullah, a police officer in Khyber, said 700 Frontier Corps troops moved into Khyber late Friday for the operation.
A round-the-clock curfew was imposed in the Bara area bordering Peshawar, and heavy contingents of troops blocked the main road into Khyber, said Mujceb Khan, a senior local official.
"All bazaars are shut and residents have been asked not to come out of their homes," he said.
Tauseef Haider, a top official with the Frontier Constabulary, said his forces had brought in reinforcements and heavy weapons to protect Peshawar and its more than 1 million residents from insurgents who might try a counterattack.
"Since the operation is going on in the tribal area, that is why we have to be extra cautious," he said from the constabulary's brick outpost in Shahkas, on the edge of the tribal area just outside of Peshawar. "We have increased our strength we will not let any militant come this way."
Across from the outpost was an expanse of flatland covered in bushes and foliage in front of undulating hills that turned into mountains.
In a sign of expected resistance, a Taliban-linked group said an offensive in the area will only create more problems.
"If the government thinks there is any issue to address, that should be resolved through talks, not by the use of force," said Munsif Khan, spokesman for the Vice and Virtue Movement. "We are ready for talks with the government."
Vice and Virtue, led by militant leader Haji Namdar, is suspected of carrying out operations against coalition soldiers across the border in Afghanistan. Namdar has sought to impose his own strict brand of Islamic law in the region. However, he is at odds with Baitullah Mehsud, who is seen as the leader of the Taiiban in Pakistan.
Menghal Bagh's fighters have waged attacks in Peshawar in what provincial officials say was an attempt to intimidate the population and show the group's ability to wield influence outside the tribal regions. Bagh's followers have also been blamed for threatening convoys of supplies bound for coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Mahmood Shah, a former security’ chief in Pakistan's tribal regions, said theTaliban control the country's entire tribal belt and "everyone now is waiting for some action from the federal government."
"The situation is such that (the Taliban) are all around Peshawar. They are on our doorstep," Shah said. "Hie situation is like water flowing into a field and until you haw some obstruction to stop it you will drown. We are drowning."
Iwo weeks ago, a Taliban force from Kliyber sent its militants into Peshawar and kidnapped 16 Christians who were later released.
Misrri Khan, who works for a tribal paramilitary force that patrols
Khyber, said the militants kidnapped 16 of his fellow officers and threatened to behead them and then take more captives if they did not abandon their checkpoints in the area. Khan said the force refused.
The Pakistani offensive comes as the Pentagon reports that security is "fragile" in many parts of Afghanistan. "TheTaliban regrouped after its fall from power and have coalesced into a resilient insurgency," states the report, which was released Friday. Though coalition forces have had some success fighting theTaJiban. terrorist attacks and bombings are likely to continue ancL even escalate this year, the report concludes.
February elections brought a new civilian government to power, eclipsing former army strongman and staunch US ally President Pervez Musharraf. In a shift in policy’, the new administration has supported peace efforts with Taliban militants to try to curb an explosion in violence in the northwest over the past year.
But Pakistan's Western allies are increasingly concerned that easing up military pressure on the militants has given them more space to operate letting them strengthen their position in Pakistan's border regions and giving them more freedom to attack US and nato forces in Afghanistan.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was in Peshawar on Saturday on a trip he said was unrelated to any impendingoperation.
In a brazen show of force Friday, a group of militants in the Bajur region executed two men accused of spying for US forces in front of 5,000 residents.
The body of a third accused spy was discovered riddled with bullets at the side of a road in Bajur, said Fazal Rabbi, a security official in the area. A note attached to his body said anyone else involved in spying would meet the same fate, he said.
At meetings in Peshawar on Friday, federal and provincial representatives hammered out the details of the Khyber operation. They also discussed the situation in the restive Swat area, where the provincial government has signed a peace deal with a radical pro-Taliban cleric, provincial officials said.
Afrasiab Khattak, chief negotiator for the provincial government, told the AP that the province is considering a second military’ operation in Swat, where militants forced out by an army offensive last year are now regainingafoothold.