Islamabad, July 04: Pakistan urges US officials to chalk-out a comprehensive strategy to counter cross-border infiltration of militants from neighboring Afghanistan.
“The US government should support Afghanistan in working out a permanent solution to check uncontrolled, illegal crossings, particularly of militants, terrorists and drug trafficking across the border with Pakistan,” Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani told US Secretary for Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano in Islamabad on Friday, a Press TV correspondent reported.
Napolitano’s visit comes as two US drones fired missiles that struck an alleged Pakistani Taliban training facility in South Waziristan, a Taliban stronghold close to the Afghan border, killing 17 people.
Gilani said that US should build a fence between Pakistan and Afghanistan to control infiltration and drug trafficking similar to the wall the governor of Arizona is erecting between the US and Mexico border.
The statement comes at a time when Pakistan has sealed its border with Afghanistan in Baluchistan, an area opposite of Afghanistan’s volatile Helmand Province.
The US plans to send some 21,000 more troops in Afghanistan this year to raise troop numbers to around 50,000.
The US has deployed over thousands of its troops near the border with Pakistan under the pretext of hunting down the militants having links with the Taliban and al-Qeada forces in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Napolitano also met President Asif Ali Zardari separately in the capital Islamabad Friday afternoon.
A US Embassy spokesman merely reported that Napolitano discussed topics of ‘mutual interest’.
—–Agencies