Pakistan more open to US help

AP:

Pakistan is taking a more welcoming view of U.S. suggestions for using American troops to train and advise its own forces in the fight against anti-government extremists, the commander of U.S. forces in that region said Wednesday.

Navy Adm. William J. Fallon, commander of U.S. Central Command, said he believes increased violence inside Pakistan in recent months has led Pakistani leaders to conclude that they must focus more intensively on extremist al-Qaida hideouts near the border with Afghanistan.

He called this an important change from Pakistan's traditional focus on India as the main threat to its security, and it meshes with Defense Secretary Robert Gates' recent comment that al-Qaida terrorists hiding in the border area are increasingly aiming their campaign of violence at targets inside Pakistan.

"They see they've got real problems internally," Fallon said in a 20-minute interview with three reporters accompanying Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a private conference here of military chiefs from Middle Eastern countries, hosted by Fallon. Pakistan was not attending.

In the latest sign of trouble, the Pakistani military said Wednesday that Islamic militants overran a military outpost close to the Afghan border in a battle that killed seven Pakistani soldiers and left 20 missing.

Although Pakistan has been a close U.S. ally in the war against terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001, the extent of U.S. military involvement inside Pakistan is a highly sensitive subject among Pakistanis.

"My sense is there is an increased willingness to address these problems, and we're going to try to help them," Fallon said. He said U.S. assistance would be "more robust," but he offered few details. "There is more willingness to do that now" on Pakistan's part, he said.

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Perhaps he is getting private conversations that are more rational than their public statements on getting US help with this serious problem. Pakistan definitely needs help with a counterinsurgency program as well as some help on training its frontier forces.

They need it soon too. The BBC reports that yet another frontier fort has fallen to the Taliban.