ISLAMABAD: The US commander in Afghanistan discussed border coordination
with Pakistan's army chief on Wednesday as the Taliban released a video
showing the remains of 17 beheaded Pakistani soldiers.
General
John Allen, who commands 130,000 NATO troops fighting the Taliban in
Afghanistan, flew into Chaklala air base and went straight into the
talks with General Ashraf Kayani at his Rawalpindi headquarters, before
jetting out of the country, officials said.
There was no
immediate comment from NATO's International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF), but a Pakistani official said Kayani demanded greater efforts
from the Americans on stopping cross-border incursions.
"It was a routine meeting to discuss the border coordination," a senior Pakistani military official told AFP.
"We
also raised the issue of cross-border attacks on the Pakistan military
from Afghanistan. We demanded that ISAF take action against the militant
sanctuaries in Afghanistan and eliminate the militant groups involved
in cross-border attacks inside Pakistan," he added.
Pakistan said
around 100 Afghan-based militants crossed the border into the
northwestern district of Upper Dir on Sunday. Six soldiers were killed
and 11 went missing. Pakistani officials said Tuesday that seven of them
were beheaded.
On Wednesday, a senior security official in the
northwest admitted that all 17 had in fact been beheaded after the
Pakistani Taliban released a video showing the slaughtered heads.
Pakistan's main umbrella Taliban faction claimed responsibility for the attack.
Intelligence
officials said the perpetrators were loyalists of Maulana Fazlullah, a
Pakistani cleric who led a two-year Taliban insurgency in the
northwestern Swat valley before fleeing into Afghanistan to escape an
army offensive in 2009.
It was also likely that Allen and Kayani
discussed Pakistan's seven-month blockade on overland NATO supplies into
Afghanistan after US air strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers along the
Afghan border on November 26.
Talks to reopen the border have reached stalemate over Pakistani demands for a formal apology
