Pakistan must act against Taliban threat: Gates

CAMP LEJEUNE: Pakistani leaders must act to stop Taliban militants who are posing a threat to the country's stability, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday.

Gates told reporters that in his discussions with Pakistani leaders, the government appeared to grasp the threat posed by Taliban militants, but he stressed the leadership needed to take action.

‘It is important they not only recognise it (the threat), but take the appropriate actions to deal with it,’ said Gates, when asked about the Taliban's recent move beyond the Swat Valley.

In a bid to expand their control, the extremists have now moved into the Buner district from the Swat valley, where President Asif Ali Zardari recently signed a deal allowing the implementation of strict Islamic law.

Pakistani paramilitary troops were deployed to the northwestern districts infiltrated by Taliban militants on Thursday amid global concern over Islamabad's ability to rein in the Islamists.

Officials and witnesses said the extremists were patrolling the streets of Buner, about 100 kilometers outside Islamabad, warning residents not to engage in ‘un-Islamic’ activity and barring women from public places.

‘The stability and the longevity of democratic government in Pakistan is central to the efforts of the coalition in Afghanistan,’ Gates warned.

‘And it is also central to our future partnership with the government in Islamabad. It is important they recognise the real threats to their country,’ the US defense secretary added at a press conference in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

The Taliban have regrouped and regained strength from hideouts in the Pakistani border areas since they were ousted from power in Afghanistan by a US-led coalition in 2001.

During their brutal five-year reign, they implemented one of the strictest forms of sharia law ever put into practice, barring Afghan girls from school, stopping women from working, and banning music and dancing.

The government lost control in Swat, a former ski resort and jewel in the crown of Pakistani tourism, after a violent two-year militant campaign to enforce strict sharia law.

It agreed to allow sharia courts in Malakand, a district of some three million people in North West Frontier Province that includes the Swat valley, in order to halt the violence.

‘Pakistan ... has one of the largest armies in the world,’ the country's ambassador in Washington, Husain Haqqani, told CNN. ‘The military is capable of dealing with the insurgency.’