US Envoys Visit Pakistani Frontier

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ISLAMABAD — Senior U.S. envoys traveled to Pakistan's volatile northwest frontier Wednesday to drop in on U.S.-funded border guards who are struggling to secure an area where Osama bin Laden may be hiding.

But this week's visit to Pakistan by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher stirred ire among some local residents who believe the trip was ill-timed and betrayed meddling on the part of Washington.

They arrived in the capital Islamabad on Tuesday, just as newly-elected Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani was taking his oath of office. He leads Pakistan's first autonomous civilian government in nearly a decade — one that has pledged to slash the powers of President Pervez Musharraf and review his U.S.-backed counterterrorism policies.

"We have to fight terrorism," Gilani told the Americans at his home Wednesday evening. "We will confront it with complete determination."

But "the world community has to do more in order to develop a collective approach" to the problem, Gilani said. He repeatedly addressed Negroponte as "your excellency."

Washington is scrambling to build bridges with Pakistan's new leaders — foes of their longtime ally Musharraf, whose loyalists were trounced in parliamentary elections last month.

Western nations are seeking reassurance that the new coalition government will keep the pressure on extremist groups using Pakistan's wild frontier as a springboard for attacks in Afghanistan and beyond.

Partners in the new government have said they would negotiate with some militant groups — an approach that has drawn criticism from Washington, the source of about $10 billion in aid to Pakistan since 2001.

The two diplomats traveled to "security and development sites" in the North West Frontier Province, including a mountaintop paramilitary base at the Khyber Pass, and met with Pakistani government and army officials, the U.S. Embassy said.

"Economic empowerment of the people in bordering areas near Afghanistan is the key to addressing the issue of extremism in that region," Gilani told the Americans after their excursion.

While the embassy provided few details, local TV channels said the pair met with commanders of the Frontier Corps, the paramilitary force that Washington plans to train and equip to fight militants linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida, and also with tribal leaders.

The deal to bring American trainers to Northwest West Frontier Province was brokered by Musharraf, whose disavowal of the Taliban and support for the U.S. in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks was considered critical in Washington.

But after routing the president's allies in Feb. 18 polls, the parties of two former prime ministers — Nawaz Sharif and the late Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in a December suicide attack — have taken control and are already reversing Musharraf's policies.

Senior judges were freed Monday after being detained by Musharraf last year in an effort to stop legal challenges to his disputed presidency. If the judges are reinstated within 30 days as the new parliamentary majority wants, Musharraf's days in power could be numbered.

That worries Washington, said analyst Rasul Bakhsh Rais, who teaches political science at the University of Management Sciences in Lahore.

"The locus of authority has changed in Pakistan and they (the Americans) have to look toward new political forces," Rais said.

"The relationship between the United States and Pakistan is going to be much more complex, much more subject to negotiations and understanding than has been the case in the past," he said.

Rais added that the U.S. envoys' visit was "not at the appropriate time." They should have waited until after the new government was formed, he said.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Sadiq said Wednesday the visit was not hastily scheduled, but the timing "has generated a lot of interest."

"There was some discussion about the timing of the visit, and some suggestions were made (about postponing it), but since the meetings were already fixed, the visit was conducted," Sadiq told reporters.

Pakistan's largest Islamic party issued a statement Wednesday calling the visit "part of the game which Bush and Musharraf have actually lost."

Khursheed Ahmad, a senator for Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan's largest Islamic party, complained of "aggressive U.S. lobbying in Pakistan to get a fresh lease of life for its disastrous and failed policies of terrorizing people and the country in the name of the war on terror."

Last year, the U.S. pledged $750 million toward a five-year drive to develop impoverished areas along the Afghan frontier and to train and equip a paramilitary force there — moves that Pakistani leaders hope will stabilize the region and dry up extremism.

American military instructors will come to Pakistan to train the Pakistani force in counterinsurgency techniques, though the program has not yet begun.

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Associated Press writer Sadaqat Jan contributed to this report.

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