Pakistan militants say ready to talk

INAYAT KALLAY- The Pakistani Taleban welcomed on Sunday the new government’s readiness to negotiate an end to a spreading conflict in Pakistan, but vowed to carry on fighting American forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.
“We’re ready for talks and to extend all kinds of cooperation to the government in order to bring peace in the tribal areas,” Maulvi Omar, a spokesman for the Tehrik-e-Taleban, told Reuters.
“But our fight against American and other foreign forces in Afghanistan would continue,” said Omar, who was attending a gathering a several thousand tribesmen in the Bajaur region.
Muslim clerics and militant leaders, guarded by several hundred armed fighters, delivered speeches in a field near the main bazaar of Bajaur’s Inayat Kallay town, while chants of ”Long Live Osama” and “Long Live Omar” rang out.
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Afghan Taleban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar are lionised as champions of Islam in many parts of the Pashtun tribal belt, a region that the United States regards as a crucible for Islamist militancy.
The United States fears that any reduction in pressure on militants based there will fuel the Taleban insurgency in Afghanistan, and provide al Qaeda with breathing space to organise attacks in the United States and Europe.
The defeat of President Pervez Musharraf’s political allies in an election last month has meant that Washington has to deal with a government intent on trying alternatives to policies that have resulted in mounting insecurity in nuclear-armed Pakistan.
After winning a vote of confidence in the National Assembly on Saturday, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said his government would talk to anyone ready to lay down arms to resolve problems afflicting the backward, insecure tribal areas.
“KEEP CEASEFIRE, OR ELSE...”
A wave of violence, including scores of suicide attacks unleashed over the past nine months, has been largely blamed on al Qaeda-inspired militant groups operating from tribal areas such as Waziristan and Bajaur.
Nearly 600 people have been killed in the last three months alone, as the militants intensified a campaign to destabilise U.S. ally Musharraf.
Maulvi Omar, whose Tehrik-e-Taleban is an umbrella organisation for militant groups based in Pakistani tribal areas, said talks could be possible if Musharraf’s policies were ditched.
The Waziristan-based chief of the Pakistani Taleban , Baitullah Mehsud did not attend the meeting at the other end of the tribal belt, but his deputy, Maulvi Faqir, is based in Bajaur.
”We have no opposition to talks but the government has to ensure a complete ceasefire, because any violation would have worst impact on the process,” Faqir told the crowd. Gilani was sworn in last Monday, and there is speculation that Musharraf, who came to power as a general in a 1999 coup, could be forced to quit within weeks or months.
Until he gave up his dual role as army chief last November, Musharraf had represented a one-stop shop for the United States regarding operations ranging from renditions of al Qaeda suspects to missile strikes by CIA-operated drone aircraft.
The Pakistan army has U.S. trainers working with its soldiers in the tribal lands, and there is talk that the United States wants to expand the use of drones.
But, according to a source close to the new government, the U.S. military has problems adjusting to dealing with institutional mechanisms that Pakistan’s new leaders want to put in place governing the scope of cooperation.
Two senior U.S. officials, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, visited Pakistan last week to sound out the country’s new leaders over how to work together for a new approach.