Pakistan ready for NWA offensive

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the Pakistan Army recently indicated it would begin combat operations in North Waziristan Agency, which US considers as a haven for al Qaeda-affiliated militants.
Panetta on Monday night said Pakistan’s military leadership gave word of the planned operation in recent conversations with the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen John Allen.
A week ago, some reports did take rounds that the joint operations had been discussed during Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lt Gen Zaheer Ul Islam’s meetings with Central Intelligence Agency and US military officials during his Washington visit. A report said Gen John Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, also discussed the matter during a meeting with Pakistan Army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani in Rawalpindi last week.
However, Pakistan’s military leadership declared all such reports baseless, saying it was not mounting joint operations with the US against Haqqani fighters holed up in North Waziristan and it alone would decide when to conduct campaigns within Pakistani territory.
“Coordinated actions on the respective side of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, being part of routine, should not be mistaken for joint operations,” the military official said. Panetta said he did not know when the Pakistani operation would start, but said he understands it will be in the “near future”, and that the main target would be the Pakistani Taliban, rather than the Haqqani network.
Panetta welcomed Kayani’s initiative, even though the main target may not be the Haqqani leadership. “They’ve talked about it for a long time. Frankly, I’d lost hope that they were going do anything about it. But it does appear that they in fact are going to take that step.”
Panetta also revealed that the US was providing additional military assistance to peacekeeping forces in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in order to strengthen security in the region. But he said that so far the Pentagon had not moved to send additional US troops to the Sinai. “We just want to make sure that we know how those forces are deployed in order to insure that we can more effectively go after those terrorists that would try to create an incident or terrorist act,” Panetta said.