Police in Pakistan arrested twenty-nine Taleban insurgents in the southwestern city of Quetta, near the border with Afghanistan. Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said two Taleban commanders were among those captured. At least ten of the insurgents had been wounded earlier in combat with North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] forces in Afghanistan's Helmand province.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri says Pakistan has, "zero tolerance for terrorists," and has brought some seven-hundred al-Qaida members to justice since 2001. Some six-hundred Pakistani soldiers have died fighting al-Qaida terrorists, Taleban insurgents, and their allies.
U.S Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says, "the Pakistanis have moved more than ten-thousand more forces to the [Afghanistan] border, but they are very long borders, and how to stop people from crossing the border is a longtime problem in the region."
The United States will provide more than two-and-a-half million dollars to improve Pakistan's border security. The aid will help Pakistan pay for border police, update communications and other equipment, and improve training.
Military officials from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the U.S.-led coalition recently met in Pakistan's South Waziristan province to coordinate efforts to stop the movement of violent extremists across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Secretary of State Rice says the U.S., Afghanistan, and Pakistan "all need to do better" to stop the terrorists:
"What we are all trying to do is to commit as strongly as we can to the [anti-terror] activities, which make it ultimately impossible for al-Qaida and Taleban to operate on that border. We [the U.S.], Afghanistan and Pakistan, are going to unify all of our efforts, as we have done over the last several years, toward the goal of eliminating the threat from al-Qaida and the Taleban."
The United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan must work together, said Secretary of State Rice, "to defeat this terrible enemy, to return this region to peace and stability, and to allow the quite remarkable progress that has been made over the last five years to continue."
The preceding was an editorial reflecting the views of the United States Government.