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Zardari could face threat from army: IISS

AFP, London
Pakistan's new president, Ali Asif Zardari, must make fighting Islamist militancy in the border regions with Afghanistan his top priority, a leading thinktank said yesterday.
But he faces a tough job to gain the trust of the army, which could ultimately threaten his government, said the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in its annual review of global geopolitical security.
"Zardari's top priority is to fight terrorism and Islamist militancy in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan," said John Chipman, head of the prestigious London thinktank, launching the Strategic Survey 2008 report.
"But the Pakistani army remains unable or unwilling to counter effectively the resurgent Taliban with over 110,000 troops deployed in the area."
US and Afghan officials say Pakistan's tribal areas are a safe haven for al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels who took sanctuary there
after the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in late 2001.
But Islamabad has vowed to defend itself against violations of its air space and incursions by US forces from Afghanistan, straining the relationship between the "war on terror" allies.
"Zardari's major challenge will be to gain the trust of the army and build a consensus against terrorism and Islamist extremism among the political establishment," Chipman told reporters.
"To pursue the campaign on tenor, he will need to balance the conflicting interests of growing US pressure for military strikes in the tribal areas with the Pakistani army's decreasing tolerance for such attacks."
He added: "In order to reduce public opposition to such a policy, he needs to build bridges with the major opposition political parties.
"Most importantly, president Zardari will need to ensure that the enuing domestic political turbulence, heightened by the growing economic crisis, does not place his
own government at risk from the army."
Zardari, the widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was sworn in as president last week.
On Wednesday, at least five people were killed when four missiles fired by suspected US drones struck a compound in a northwestern Pakistani tribal area near the Afghan border, according to officials in nearby Peshawar.
Pakistan and the United States have been drawn into a row over the strikes, with Kayani strongly criticising them and insisting no deal existed to allow foreign troops to conduct them.
The Pakistani army repeated its position last Friday via an official statement quoting Kayani that pledged to safeguard the country's "territorial integrity."
As well as missile strikes, Pakistan last week for the first time accused Afghanistan-based troops of carrying out a direct attack on its territory, with a raid in the South Waziristan tribal zone that left 15 people dead.