Geo436.com blog: Pak army plans assault on militants in N.Waziristan: US

Geo436 WASHINGTON: Pakistan's army has pledged to go after militants the U.S. wants targeted in an area harboring al- Qaeda that has become "the epicenter of terrorism," President Barack Obama's top military adviser said.

Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said his Pakistani counterpart, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has given assurances he will mount an offensive the U.S. has long called for in North Waziristan along the Afghan border.

Muller cited as evidence for his optimism Pakistan's offensives against the Taliban and related groups elsewhere in the country during the past 1½ years.

"He's committed to me to go into North Waziristan and to root out these terrorists as well," Mullen, 64, said in an interview with media which will be broadcast this weekend.

He said the goal was to defeat al-Qaeda and ensure Afghanistan wouldn't again become a haven for the group as it had been before the U.S. ousted the Taliban from power after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

In addition to the military campaign in Afghanistan, Obama is relying on neighboring Pakistan to help rout al-Qaeda and related groups that threaten troops across the border and may be preparing further attacks in Europe or the U.S., such as the May 1 car-bomb attempt in New York's Times Square.

North Waziristan "is the epicenter of terrorism," Mullen said. "It's where al-Qaeda lives."

Kayani, the Pakistan Army chief of staff, has shifted more than 70,000 troops from the country's border with India, its traditional rival, to the northwest, mobilizing a total of 140,000 forces, Mullen said.

"They've sacrificed, they've lost a lot of citizens and they are really concerned, urgently concerned, about the threat to their own country from terrorists," Mullen said. "Two years ago, that wasn't the case."

Still, Mullen didn't give a time frame for a possible offensive in North Waziristan. He said Kayani has primarily targeted groups that pose an internal threat, not those the U.S. considers most dangerous.

Mullen, who took office in October 2007, said he has probably been to Pakistan 20 times, seeking to rebuild ties that frayed in the 1990s.

The U.S. relationship with Pakistan "comes from what I call a very dark hole where we left them," Mullen said. "So to assert certainties right now I think is a real challenge."