CHINA: Pakistan PM says his government will react to violence at "appropriate time"

Record ID: 859373

  • Title: CHINA: Pakistan PM says his government will react to violence at "appropriate time"
  • Date: 16th October 2009
  • Summary: BEIJING, CHINA (OCTOBER 15, 2009) (REUTERS) PAKISTANI PRIME MINISTER YUSUF RAZA GILANI WALKING INTO CONFERENCE HALL AND SHAKING HANDS WITH CHINESE PREMIER WEN JIABAO PHOTOGRAPHERS
  • Embargoed: 31st October 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: China
  • City:
  • Country: China
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAZIB9TQKOJNO9YX40QC89SJM7
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  • Story Text: Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani on Thursday (October 15) told Chinese state television his government would respond to a string of attacks in the Pakistani heartland and in the troubled northwest at an
    "appropriate time".
    Attacks on Thursday on police in Lahore, capital of Punjab province, and a car bomb in Kohat in the northwest, came ahead of an expected military offensive against the Taliban in their South Waziristan stronghold on the Afghan border.
    Later, a car bomb was set off by remote control in a neighbourhood where government workers live in the north-western city of Peshawar killing a child and wounding about a dozen people, police said.
    The attacks killed 31 people, and came after a week of violence in which more than 100 people died.
    Speaking in Beijing following a meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Gilani said the Pakistani government had a strategy which it would implement at a time that was still to be determined.

    "In fact when there was a military action in Malakand that was when the ... (INAUDIBLE) of the government was challenged and law enforcement agencies were made targets, therefore, we were left with no choice except to have a military action. Now, certainly when they have raided, they have made the target the DHQs and today they had also targeted one of t he FIA's office, therefore and then they accept the responsibility and the people when they accept the responsibility, they have the fear too, that the government can react and certainly we will react at a time when we will have some strategy, which we have one, but the timings would be determined at an appropriate (time)," he said.
    The Pakistani government says most attacks are plotted in South Waziristan and carried out by Taliban, often with the help of allies from militant groups based in Punjab province.
    Nuclear-armed Pakistan is under U.S. pressure to crack down on Islamist militancy as President Barack Obama considers a boost in troop numbers fighting in neighbouring Afghanistan.
    The government in June ordered the army to launch an offensive in South Waziristan. Since then the military has been conducting air and artillery strikes to soften up militant defences.
    Aircraft flew repeated bombing sorties while soldiers used artillery to attack militants in South Waziristan on Thursday, security officials said. They later said 27 Taliban were killed. There was no independent verification of that toll.
    The government says the assault against an estimated 10,000 hard core Taliban is imminent but it will be up to the army to decide when to send in ground troops.
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