Pakistan Gets Us Message to Crack Down on Taliban

The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, was dispatched to Pakistan yesterday to lend force to growing frustration at the country's failure to crack down on a resurgent Taliban operating in its remote border regions.

The unannounced visit by Mr Cheney and the deputy director of the CIA, Steve Kappes, comes on the eve of an expected spring offensive by the Taliban, and follows charges from US and Nato commanders on the ground that the militia is using tribal areas of Pakistan as a haven and a base from which to launch their attacks.

Concern about lost ground in the front line on the war on terror - Afghanistan - also came from the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, who was in Islamabad yesterday.

Mr Cheney's brief visit was seen as a forceful expression of President George Bush's call this month for a new effort in Afghanistan, with an infusion of funds and US forces in the fight against the Taliban. The US has increased its forces in Afghanistan to 27,000 troops.

However, a planned meeting with the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, was cancelled when bad weather prevented Mr Cheney from travelling beyond the US military base at Bagram.

Before travelling on to Afghanistan yesterday, Mr Cheney used two hours of talks with Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, in Islamabad to impress on him the Bush administration's impatience for some evidence that Taliban supply routes are being disrupted, and that the hunt for al-Qaida has not gone cold.

"Cheney expressed US apprehensions of regrouping of al-Qaida in the tribal areas and called for concerted efforts in countering the threat," a statement from Gen Musharraf's office said. It said that Gen Musharraf had told Mr Cheney that Pakistan "had done the maximum" to crack down on Islamist extremists.

The New York Times reported yesterday that Gen Musharraf has been warned that Congress, now under the control of the Democrats, could cut off funds to Pakistan unless it moves more decisively against elements of the Taliban operating in its border regions.

Pakistan's president has been under steady pressure from the Bush administration since he signed a treaty with tribal elders in Waziristan that saw government forces withdraw from the remote region.

Critics, spearheaded by the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, said then that the deal created a haven for the Taliban in the lawless border lands - an impression that deepened when a Pakistani general said publicly that Osama bin Laden would not be put under arrest so long as he lived like a law-abiding citizen.

Pakistani officials quickly disavowed that statement. They say they are being unfairly blamed for the failure of the Karzai government to exercise authority beyond Kabul, and that it is impossible to seal off entirely a border more than 1,200 miles long. The Waziristan deal, they argue, is not the root cause of the Taliban's return.

"The bottom line is even if it is not working, it can't cause all the problems in Afghanistan," said one senior government official. "But if I would have to give a number I would say maybe 10% of the problem is Pakistan's problem."