The Pakistani Army indicated Thursday that it would not launch any new offensives against extremists in the mountainous region of North Waziristan for at least six months, pushing back against calls by the United States to root out militants staging attacks along the Afghan border.
An Army spokesman described Pakistan’s position as the United States secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, arrived here for an unannounced two-day visit. Mr. Gates said that he planned to urge top Pakistani military officials to pursue extremist groups along their border, and that ignoring “one part of this cancer” would threaten the entire country’s stability.
But the Army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, told American reporters at the headquarters of the Pakistani Army in the garrison city of Rawalpindi that Pakistan had to contain some of the extremist groups in the wake of offensives against Taliban fighters last year. General Abbas said it would be six months to a year before any new operation began, and said the situation was not as “black and white” as Mr. Gates described.
Mr. Gates, who is on his first trip to Pakistan in three years, was to meet on Thursday with the Pakistani Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, as well as the director of the country’s spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha.
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