Pakistan FM to visit US for 'war on terror' review

PAKISTAN: Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi will visit Washington this week for talks with US and Afghan officials on how to combat extremism and militancy in the region, officials said Sunday.

During the visit which is to begin Monday, Qureshi is due to meet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, US special regional envoy Richard Holbrooke and other senior members of President Barack Obama's administration, his ministry said.

Qureshi will join his Afghan counterpart Rangeen Dadfar Spanta for the talks, part of a strategic review of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistani efforts to deal with Taliban militants on its side of the border.

The United States has expressed concern to Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari that a deal allowing the implementation of Islamic law in the volatile northwest Swat valley amounted to a possible capitulation to Taliban militants.

Holbrooke said in an interview that he had expressed his "concern" about the situation on Thursday. On Friday, a bomb blast at a funeral in northwest Pakistan killed 30 people, highlighting the instability of the nuclear-armed nation's border regions.

The agreement this week in Pakistan's Malakand area, which includes the Swat valley, has been widely seen as a government concession to Taliban Islamic militants to secure an end to deadly fighting in the area.

Islamabad, Monday, AFP