Peshawar: Pakistan military has no plans to launch a new offensive in a tribal region, said an Army Commander.
The statement by Lieutenant General Asif Yasin Malik denied extensive media speculation that an operation in North Waziristan, tribal area of Pakistan, was in the progress after years of requests for it from the United States.
Malik’s dismissal came when police said a cross-border insurgent attack elsewhere in the northwest killed five security troops on Wednesday.
The general oversees military operations in the northwest region and other parts of the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. He spoke to reporters on a military-hosted trip to Orakzai, one of the tribal regions where the army has attacked Taliban and other extremists.
His reasoning for holding off on an offensive in North Waziristan was the same advanced by other army officials in recent years that Pakistani troops are too extended going after insurgents elsewhere. Unlike the major militant groups in North Waziristan, the insurgent groups Pakistan has targeted tend to stage most of their attacks inside Pakistan.
“There is no change in North Waziristan in past months and weeks,” Malik said. “We will undertake an operation when we want to, when it s in the national interest.”
Local media reports have recently suggested that Pakistan may have been persuaded to conduct a limited operation in North Waziristan soon as a means of rebuilding relationships with the US, which have been severely damaged by the May 2 American raid that killed former al Qaeda Osama Bin Laden.
Pakistani leaders insist they had no idea the bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad. But they have called the unilateral US night raid a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.
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