News
Sunday, May 30, 2010
US mulls unilateral Pakistan strikes
* US military officials say strike will only be considered under extreme circumstances
WASHINGTON: US military planners are looking at options for a unilateral strike in Pakistan, if a successful attack on US soil is traced to the Tribal Areas, The Washington Post reported late on Friday.
US retaliation would be contemplated only under extreme circumstances, unnamed senior military officials told the Post.
These circumstances might include a catastrophic attack that convinced US President Barack Obama that the ongoing campaign of CIA drone strikes was insufficient.
The officials said airstrikes would be the most effective option in reducing the threat posed by al Qaeda and other groups, but the US must be careful not to damage its military relationship with Pakistan to a point where it cannot be repaired.
“Planning has been reinvigorated in the wake of Times Square,” one official told the newspaper.
The report comes in the wake of the failed May 1 attack on New York’s crowded Times Square, which is in the city’s busy theatre district.
Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old Pakistani-born naturalised US citizen, was arrested apparently trying to flee the country on a flight to Dubai 53 hours after street vendors alerted police to smoke coming out of a vehicle there.
The van was found to contain a bomb consisting of timers, wires, fireworks, gasoline, propane tanks and fertiliser.
Shahzad is due for a federal court hearing in New York on June 1.
According to The Post, the US administration is trying to deepen ties to Pakistan’s intelligence officials in a bid to head off any attack by militant groups.
The two countries recently established a joint military intelligence centre on the outskirts of Peshawar, and were in talks to set up another one near Quetta, the paper said.
The CIA already conducts unmanned drone strikes in the Tribal Areas. Officials told the Post that a US military response would be considered only if a terrorist attacks persuaded President Barack Obama that the CIA campaign is ineffective.
A senior US official said Pakistan had been already told that it had only weeks to show real progress in a crackdown against the Taliban.
The US has put Pakistan “on a clock” to launch a new intelligence and counterterrorist offensive against the group. agencies
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk