‘US, Pakistan join hands to kill Mehsud’

* Pakistani intelligence official claims US ignored intelligence on Baitullah Mehsud’s whereabouts on two occasions
* US commanders now view Mehsud as major threat

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Pakistan and the US have agreed to stage a joint operation to kill local Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, a Pakistani intelligence official told The Daily Telegraph on condition of anonymity.

According to the intelligence official, Islamabad will pass intelligence about Mehsud’s movements to Washington, with the aim of guiding a missile attack from an American drone. He said that while the government opposes all strikes of this kind as an invasion of the country’s sovereignty in public, behind the scenes it is quietly passing on targeting information to Americans. “We are mounting joint operations against Baitullah Mehsud which will hopefully soon show results,” he added. He said the US had agreed to target Mehsud after months of persuasion by Islamabad’s top military leadership.

Intelligence ignored: Mehsud, who is based in South Waziristan, threatened to target the US after claiming responsibility for the attack on a police training centre outside Lahore on Monday. The intelligence official told the British daily that Pakistan had twice given America intelligence about Mehsud’s whereabouts for targeting. He claimed that it had been ignored both times. “He was travelling on a road from point A to point B, and twice we tipped off America,” he said. “But nothing happened. That raised a question mark over America as an ally for us,” the official added.

Major threat: However, US commanders now view Mehsud as a major threat. He is considered to have links to Al Qaeda and last month he joined an alliance of Taliban leaders from across the border in Afghanistan, who are preparing to counter President Barack Obama’s deployment of more US troops in the country. Mehsud has also attacked supply convoys for Western forces in Afghanistan, which travel through Pakistan and cross the northwest frontier through Khyber Pass.

According to the Telegraph, targeting Mehsud may help to rebuild trust between the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and the US. ISI officials, however, say that America is too close to India. They suspect that Washington is levelling accusations of collusion with the Taliban against the ISI to create a pretext for sending US troops into Pakistan or widening its missile attacks beyond the Tribal Areas.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\04\05\story_5-4-2009_pg1_10