US deadline to Pakistan over Qaeda head

Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/182915.html

The US has reportedly given Pakistan a deadline till July to capture the top leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Omar, and suspected al-Qaeda leader, Ilyas Kashmiri.

The White House has also warned Pakistani officials that the US military would launch a military operation against the mountainous and tribal region of North Waziristan should Islamabad fail to arrest the pair, India's private NDTV television network reported on Thursday.

The deadline apparently corresponds with the time foreign forces embark on withdrawing from Afghanistan.

During her visit to Pakistan last Friday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handed over to Pakistani officials a list of most wanted terrorist leaders, seeking immediate intelligence information on them.

She also called on Islamabad to possibly target these terrorists in joint operations with Washington.

The list includes al-Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri; the chief operating officer of Haqqani terror network Siraj Haqqani; the leader of the Pakistan-based Harkat-ul Jihad Islami militant group Ilyas Kashmiri; as well as Abdel Rahman, key intermediary between Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's affiliate networks across the world Atiya.

US President Barack Obama claimed that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces on May 1 in a hiding compound in Pakistan.

Former officials with Pakistan's military and intelligence service say the US wrongfully claims it has killed bin Laden in Pakistan as part of a scheme to invade the country for harboring the terrorist leader