Pakistan could evict rather than kill militants: US official

WASHINGTON / Reuters

Pakistan need not kill or capture militants such as members of the Haqqani network that use its territory to launch attacks in Afghanistan but could push them across the border instead, a
senior US official said.
Evicting the militants would put them at risk of attack from Afghan and US forces trying to keep Afghanistan from becoming a launching pad for strikes on the West more than 16 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
The United States is pressuring Pakistan to cease providing sanctuary — which it denies giving — to extremist militants unleashing chaos in neighbouring Afghanistan. On January 4, Washington said it would suspend some security aid to Islamabad to get it to end support for the Afghan Taliban and the allied Haqqani network whose attacks in Afghanistan have killed US, Afghan and other forces.
The senior US official said in an interview that since the aid suspension – which US officials later said could affect as much as about $2 billion — the United States has not seen any sustained Pakistani effort against the militants. In the latest US-led push to spur Pakistani action, a global money-laundering watchdog decided to put the country back on its terrorist fina-ncing watch list, a Pakistani government official and a diplomat told Reuters in Islamabad.
The US official dismissed suggestions pressure from Washington may backfire and suggested that Pakistan might start by taking smaller, tactical steps, including forcing such groups into Afghanistan before the spring fighting season begins. “I don’t think Pakistan is feeling its oats. I think it’s feeling pressure,” said the US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We have their attention.”