Pak govt pressured to craft coherent anti-terror policy
Pakistani newspapers urged the fledgling civilian government and the military yesterday to craft a coherent policy against terrorism after a massive truck bomb killed 53 people at a luxury hotel in the capital.
Meanwhile, local intelligence officials said troops and tribesmen opened fire when two US helicopters crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan.
Investigators kept searching Islamabad's wrecked Marriott Hotel as suspicion hardened that al-Qaeda or the Taliban were behind the blast Saturday at the prime expatriate hangout. Some 270 people were wounded, while the dead included the Czech ambassador and two US Department of Defence employees.
The attack, whose primary victims were Pakistanis, increases pressure on the government to reduce the rising violence in the Muslim nation that many blame on the country's partnership with the US in the war on terror.
Pakistan's civilian leadership including new President Asif Ali Zardari has said it is committed to battling militancy, but has also insisted that the strategy should include attempts to negotiate peace with insurgents, with force as a last resort.
US officials have warned that peace pacts simply give Taliban and al-Qaeda militants time to regroup in their bases in Pakistan's northwest tribal regions, where they can plan more attacks in Afghanistan and on the West.
The military, still the country's most powerful institution, has launched stop-start offensives against insurgents in its regions bordering Afghanistan. The operations are said to have killed hundreds of suspected militants, but have also been followed by suicide attacks throughout the country that the extremists claim are revenge.
Leading papers said Monday that the nation must take ownership of the fight, no matter the reservations about America's actions in Afghanistan or elsewhere, and despite the notion that the Marriott was targeted because it was a social magnet for foreigners.
"It is time we accepted this war is our own," said a lengthy editorial in The News, one of the largest English language dailies in the country. "There must be no ambiguity about this."
Another leading daily, Dawn, said the country displayed a "distressing" lack of "visible direction," and that "the civilians leaders and their uniformed counterparts must draw up a clear policy to fight terrorism."
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