After a series of bloody military clashes in its border regions, Pakistan yesterday again offered amnesty to foreign militants, but vowed to defeat them by force if they didn't lay down their weapons.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the militants -- hiding in Pakistan's rugged tribal regions bordering Afghanistan -- would not be extradited to other countries if they accepted the long-standing offer.
"We will not hand them over to any country if they surrender," he told reporters. If they did not, he said: "We will flush them out."
A series of major army operations, including air strikes and artillery, have scattered hundreds of suspected al-Qaeda-linked fighters, and left scores of people dead.
But militants, believed to include Uzbeks, Chechens and Arabs, are still sheltering in mountains of the lawless South Waziristan tribal region and show no signs of giving up.
On Wednesday, new Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told his first Cabinet meeting that the government would seek a political solution. The Cabinet formed a special committee, including Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao and the governor of North West Frontier Province where Waziristan is located, to negotiate with tribal elders.
Such efforts have failed in the past. The government has also maintained amnesty offers for months but no militants have accepted. Hostilities have escalated in the past week. The military has launched attacks by jet fighters and helicopter gunships, killing 50 fighters in a raid on a suspected terrorist training camp on Sept. 9.
Since then, militants are believed to have ambushed army convoys and stepped up attacks on military forces in the region.
Pakistan is a key US ally in the war on terrorism. It has deployed about 70,000 troops in its tribal regions -- a possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden -- to track down suspected terrorists.
RSS