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| Act or we Act | | US sets two-week deadline for Pak | |
London, May 01: US Central Command chief General David Petraeus has said the US will be forced to act if Pakistan is not able to take concrete action against the Taliban in the next two weeks.
According to a TV news channel, General Petraeus told US officials that Pakistan has run out of excuses, and are "finally getting serious" about the countering the existential threat that the Taliban and al Qaeda poses.
"We''ve heard it all before from the Pakistanis and are looking to see concrete action by the government to destroy the Taliban in the next two weeks before determining the United States'' next course of action,” General Petraeus told law makers and officials of the Obama Administration earlier this week.
Sources said that General Petraeus and top officials of the Obama Administration believe that the Pakistani Army is "superior" to the Zardari led democratic government, and it could possibly survive even if the Zardari government caved in to the Taliban.
The officials believe that it is almost an improbable task for the Pakistan Army to counter the expanding writ of the Taliban in the country and wipe them off.
“Even with intent and superior technology, the capability may not be there" for the Pakistani Army to defeat the extremists,” officials said.
About the fears of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of the extremists, officials said that General Petraeus believes that even if extremists succeed in toppling the Zardari government , it was still conceivable that Pakistan Army led by Chief of Staff General Ashfaq Kayani could maintain control over the ‘scattered’ nuclear weapons.
In response to a question General Petraeus said the nuclear weapons of the country are safe at present. "We are confident in the security of their nuclear weapons and their storage and handling of those," he said.
"It's an enormous shift for the Pakistani military to change from a focus that is almost exclusively on conventional military operations -- in other words, offense and defense along their eastern boundary with India -- to focus more on dealing with the irregular warfare threat posed by the internal extremists."
The US even fears that the country may be taken over by Islamist extremists. The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said in an interview last week that he was "extremely concerned" about the Taliban's recent moves closer to Pakistan's capital of Islamabad.
"We're certainly moving closer to the tipping point" where Pakistan could be overtaken by Islamic extremists, Adm. Mike Mullen.
Pakistani army's offensive against the Taliban in Buner and Dir has entered the fourth day on Friday. Five militants have been killed in a fresh offensive by security forces in the Maidan area of lower Dir. Earlier in the day, Taliban militants had stormed into the paramilitary headquarters of Frontier Corps in Dir and held 10 soldiers who were later released.
The deteriorating situation had forced Obama to comment that the civilian government in Pakistan was fragile and was unable to handle the crisis on ground. Pakistan PM Gilani today rejected that statement as a personal opinion of President Obama.
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