Pakistanis decry US airstrikes to Petraeus

Say attacks drive wedge; General to visit border area

AFGHAN VIOLENCE - An Afghan policeman stood guard in Kabul yesterday. Gunmen kidnapped a French aid worker yesterday and shot dead an Afghan driver for the national intelligence agency who tried to stop the abduction, a senior police officer said. (Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - In his new position as head of the US Central Command, General David H. Petraeus met top Pakistani officials for the first time yesterday and heard one message wherever he turned: American airstrikes against militants in the tribal areas are unhelpful.

Petraeus, the former commander of American forces in Iraq, arrived in Pakistan as missile strikes from drone aircraft against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas have escalated. There were two separate missile attacks by American drones Saturday. In retaliation, a suicide bomber killed eight Pakistani paramilitary soldiers in South Waziristan Sunday.

After the meeting with Petraeus, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan said in a statement, "Continuing drone attacks on our territory, which result in loss of precious lives and property, are counterproductive and difficult to explain by a democratically elected government. It is creating a credibility gap."

"We got certain messages with each of those we talked to today and some of those were very clear and we have to take those on board," CNN quoted Petraeus as saying. "The tone of the conversation was very frank and very forthright, as it should be," he added later.

Petraeus, who has been consulting in recent weeks with a wide range of people on the efforts by the Pakistani military to quell the insurgency in the tribal areas and on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, on Friday took over Central Command, putting him in overall charge of the American-led military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The general's visit came as the Pentagon and the White House are completing reviews on policies toward Afghanistan, and as Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, has made clear that Pakistan and Afghanistan would be more of a foreign policy focus if he were to win the election. In an interview on CNN broadcast this past weekend, Obama said he believed it was necessary to convince Pakistan that the main threat to its security came from the militants, and not India, its historical enemy.

During his round of calls with the Pakistani government yesterday, Petraeus met with the commander of the Pakistani military, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the defense minister, Ahmad Mukhtar.

The American missile attacks in the tribal areas were generating "anti-American sentiments" and creating "outrage and uproar among the people," Mukhtar said in a statement.

A senior Pakistani military official said the army wanted to "bring home the point that the missile strikes are counterproductive, and that this is driving a wedge between the government and the tribal people."

Pakistani officials have consistently complained about the airstrikes that have been aimed at Arab fighters and Pakistani militants connected to Al Qaeda.

But the statements against the airstrikes have been couched in less dramatic language than Kayani's declaration after an American ground raid in September in which he said Pakistan would defend its borders at "all costs." There have been no known ground raids in the tribal areas since.

On a more positive note, the senior Pakistani military official, who declined to be identified by name because of the sensitivity of the subject, said that the United States had started to "listening to us" and had moved toward sealing the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan in the area of Bajaur in the tribal area.

The Pakistani Army is fighting Taliban militants in Bajaur and has criticized the United States for what it says is the failure of American troops in Afghanistan to stop Afghan militants crossing into Bajaur and joining the battle.

The Americans had moved some of their forces to the east of the Kunar river last week and this had helped curb the flow of militants into Bajaur, the Pakistani military official said. "It is bearing positive results," he said.

In an effort to show Petraeus the hard terrain that the Pakistani forces face against the insurgents in the tribal areas, the military planned to fly him over some of the terrain today, the military official said.

That way, the general would get an idea of the long porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. "It will be a glimpse of the Tora Bora from the other side," he said, referring to the area in Afghanistan near the Pakistani border from where Osama bin Laden is believed to have escaped in late 2001.