WASHINGTON: US and Pakistan has formed an anti-terror squad reports say, the move comes after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presented the Pakistanis with the US list of most-wanted terrorism targets, US and Pakistani officials said Wednesday. The list includes some groups the Pakistanis have been reluctant to attack, US officials said.
It’s one of a host of confidence-building measures meant to restore trust blown on both sides after US forces tracked down and killed al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden during a secret raid in Pakistan last month.
But it also amounts to a new test of loyalty for both sides. The Pakistanis say the US has failed to share its best intelligence, instead running numerous unilateral spying operations on its soil.
US officials say they need to see the Pakistanis target militants they’ve long sheltered, including the Haqqani network, which operates with impunity in the Pakistani tribal areas while attacking US troops in Afghanistan.
The US and Pakistan have engaged in a diplomatic stare-down since the May 2 raid, with the Pakistanis outraged over the unilateral action as an affront to its sovereignty and the Americans angry to find that bin Laden had been hiding for more than five years in a military town just 35 miles from the capital, Islamabad.
