Pak parliament gets rare briefing on militant threat
Pakistan's parliament met Wednesday amid massive security for an unprecedented intelligence briefing on the threat posed by al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, officials said.
Helicopters circled central Islamabad and thousands of troops and police stood guard at checkpoints around the city, the scene of a devastating bombing last month at the luxury Marriott Hotel.
President Asif Ali Zardari and other lawmakers heard military and spy chiefs outline the gravity of the fight against extremists in northwestern Pakistan and the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan and the progress so far.
"Both houses of parliament have met and they are now receiving the briefing," an official in the parliament media office told AFP on condition of anonymity.
General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, named last week to take over as head of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, led the briefing. A question-and-answer session will follow, officials said.
The session was a "historic event and we hope it will make MPs from all parties aware of the security threat facing the country," said Farzana Raja, a key aide to Zardari and senior member of the ruling Pakistan People's Party.
"This is Pakistan's war now, and we hope lawmakers will come up with proposals to formulate a home-grown counter-terrorism strategy to deal with the threat," she said.
Pakistan has suffered a wave of suicide bombings in the past two years, leaving around 1,200 people dead, while Zardari is under intense US pressure to rein in the militants.
"The aim is to sensitise lawmakers to the grave security threat to national security posed by militants operating in the northwest," a senior government official said.
Police used coils of barbed wire and concrete barriers to block roads around parliament, where the senate and national assembly were due to meet to ward off possible attacks.
The meeting comes as Pakistani troops continue to battle al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked militants in the tribal region of Bajaur in a major operation launched in August.
It is the latest and bloodiest phase of Pakistan's battle against Islamist extremists since it joined the US-led "war on terror" after the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to topple the Taliban regime.
The threat was underscored by the Marriott bombing on September 20, one of the worst terror attacks in Pakistan's history, in which 60 people were killed, including two US military personnel and the Czech ambassador.
The offensive came after Islamabad came faced growing criticism from Washington over its failure to curb attacks on international forces across the border in Afghanistan.
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