ISLAMABAD:
Pakistan will not launch an offensive against Haqqani militants despite Washington ramping up the pressure after a series of attacks on US targets in Afghanistan, an official said Monday.
Pakistan’s army chief of staff gathered together his top generals in an extraordinary meeting at the weekend after a series of stinging rebukes from the Americans blaming the Haqqanis and Pakistani intelligence over attacks.
General James Mattis, commander of the US Central Command, which oversees the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, became the most senior US commander to hold talks with Pakistani generals in Islamabad since the pressure mounted.
“I don’t think the indicators are as such,” a senior Pakistani security official told AFP when asked if the army was going to launch an operation in North Waziristan, where the Haqqani leadership is allegedly based.
Instead, he said, the military needs to “consolidate gains” made against local militants who pose a security threat elsewhere in Pakistan’s tribal belt that Washington has branded an Al-Qaeda headquarters.
