Pakistan’s army said Tuesday it had captured a key Taliban and Al-Qaeda complex dug into rocky mountains close to the Afghan border after killing 75 local and foreign militants.

Commanders gave journalists a guided tour of the bastion, which one general said numbered 156 caves developed over five to seven years, and carved into sheer rock within clear view of the snow-capped peaks in eastern Afghanistan.

The visit follows Pakistan’s latest offensive against militants in its semi-autonomous tribal badlands, launched under US pressure to eliminate Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked groups who attack Western troops in Afghanistan.

Major General Tariq Khan accompanied journalists to the warren of caves in the area of Damadola that he said served as a key militant headquarters until troops overran the complex in an offensive launched in January.

“There were Egyptians, Uzbeks, Chechens and Afghans killed in the operation,” he told reporters.

Journalists saw bedding such as pillows and mattresses, which suggested inhabitants had camped out for significant periods.

“The first Pakistan army uniformed soldiers have arrived in Damadola after a recent operation and the Pakistan flag has been raised for the first time since (independence in) 1947,” said Khan.

Damadola, in the Bajaur tribal region, was the scene of a 2006 US drone strike that targeted Al-Qaeda number two Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who managed to escape.

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• Pakistan ‘captures Taliban base’ (news.bbc.co.uk)

The Australian government will unleash the full resources of its major spy agencies, including phone taps and satellite surveillance, against people-smugglers and other criminal gangs threatening Australia’s border security.

That will mean significantly increasing the agencies’ powers to deal with criminal activity rather than their present focus on direct threats to national security posed by foreign states and their agents.

There will also be tough new penalties — ranging up to $220,000 — for anyone sending asylum-seekers into danger in leaky boats or risking their lives by setting fire to their vessels.

The government is introducing the measures to deal with a surge in the number of asylum-seekers reaching Australian waters in boats along increasingly diverse routes and using more sophisticated smuggling methods. Nearly 3000 asylum-seekers and crew members arrived last year, pushing facilities on Christmas Island to breaking point.

The changes are partly in response to the increasing involvement of Australians in the people-smuggling trade.

The government confirmed the move yesterday after releasing its terrorism white paper, which warned the main threat faced by Australia now came from homegrown extremists and terror cells in places such as Somalia and Yemen.

Kevin Rudd announced that $69 million would be spent over four years on a new, hi-tech system of visa screening with fingerprint and facial identity checks for visitors from 10 countries, yet to be identified.

However, The Australian has learnt that regional terror hotspots such as Indonesia, India and, critically, Pakistan, will not be included on this list.

Pakistan on Wednesday confirmed for the first time that it has the Afghan Taliban’s No. 2 leader in custody, and officials said he was providing useful intelligence that was being shared with the United States.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was arrested around 10 days ago in a joint operation by CIA and Pakistani security forces in Karachi, US and Pakistani officials said on condition of anonymity Tuesday. The army on Wednesday gave the first public confirmation of the arrest.

”At the conclusion of detailed identification procedures, it has been confirmed that one of the persons arrested happens to be Mullah Baradar,” chief army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said in a written message to reporters.

”The place of arrest and operational details cannot be released due to security reasons.”

Baradar was the second in command behind Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar and was said to be in charge of the day-to-day running of the organisation’s leadership council, which is believed based in Pakistan. He was a founding member of the Taliban and is the most important figure of the movement to be arrested since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The White House has declined to confirm Baradar’s capture. Spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters the fight against extremists involves sensitive intelligence matters and he believes it’s best to collect that information without talking about it.

Baradar, who also functioned as the link between Mullah Omar and field commanders, has been in detention for more than 10 days and was talking to interrogators, two Pakistani intelligence officials confirmed.

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Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Tuesday said the hydra-headed menace of terrorism was our common enemy and no one country could battle it out alone.

He termed the Friends of Democratic Pakistan “a collective determination against an evil mindset” and urged the international community to address root causes of terrorism such as poverty and unemployment.

The foreign minister was addressing the Friends of Democratic Pakistan’s Public-Private Partnership Conference in Dubai.

He said the three-year plan of reconstruction and rehabilitation in Malakand comprised close to 500 projects and would cost about $ 300 million.

The five year development plan, based on Post-crisis Needs Assessment, would cost around $1.2 billion, and the FoDP must expedite its process to complete these projects, the minister said.

Pakistan has suffered huge economic losses of over $35 billion since September 11 in terms of infrastructure, investment and exports, Qureshi said.

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President Asif Ali Zardari on Tuesday said all super powers should come forward to settle the Kashmir dispute.

Addressing a joint session of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Assembly and the Kashmir Council, President Zardari said India wanted to suppress the voice of the Kashmiri people through use of force.

According to Dawn.com, President Zardari said fighting for Kashmir’s liberation was Pakistan’s responsibility.

Regional peace would not be possible without the Kashmir dispute’s resolution, he said.

The president told the session that a committee on Kashmir Affairs had also been constituted. He also announced a countrywide increase in number of seats for medical students from the region.

From now on, the threat of a terrorist attack on Dutch soil is only “limited”. Over the past two years the threat was “substantial”, but Muslim extremists prefer to seek refuge across the border, an analysis of the Netherlands’ National Anti-Terrorism Co-ordinator published on Tuesday has revealed.

Politicians in The Hague and other potential targets can breathe a sigh of relief. According to the Dutch intelligence agency (AIVD) local networks of radical Muslims such as the notorious Hofstad group were weakened over the past year by internal divisions and a lack of leadership.

The Netherlands is rarely being mentioned in video threats issued by jihadist groups, despite the rise of anti-Islam opposition politician Geert Wilders. His controversial film Fitna caused a lot of commotion last year, but it seems to have gone off the jihadist radar since.

The judgment that the Netherlands is no longer a “preferred target” does not imply that the threat as a whole has got smaller, AIVD’s Director of Internal Security Wil van Gemert warns. If anything, the threat has moved elsewhere.

“There are still plenty of radical youths and people who warmly sympathise with the struggle. But we also see that they are more focused on conflict areas abroad. I’m referring to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia. People are talking about travelling to those areas, or are actually there to receive training.”

Earlier this year four men from the Netherlands were arrested and sent back, because they were allegedly on their way to a jihadist training camp in Somalia.

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Italy will send an additional 1,000 or at most 1,500 troops to join the contingent of some 2,800 men it already has in Afghanistan. ”

A decision on the number of troops is on the agenda of this evening’s cabinet meeting and will be made public afterwards by the ministers involved,” Foreign Minister Franco Frattini and Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa, the premier added. La Repubblica reports this evening that the final number has been confirmed at 1,000 and the troops will withdraw by 2013.

The forces are expected to be found by reducing Italy’s presence in international missions in Bosnia and Lebanon.

Italy’s contribution to the troop surge envisioned in US President Barack Omaba’s new strategy for Afghanistan will be at the center of talks Frattini will have on Friday with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the special US representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke.

The encounter will take place on the sidelines of a meeting in Brussels of NATO foreign ministers.

Speaking to the press on Thursday, Berlusconi reiterated Italy’s support for the new US strategy which he said “foresees an exit strategy which, although it does not begin today, will leave that country in a different condition than it is in now”.

“I have spoken to the (US) president about this and the need to revitalise the (Afghan) economy, which today is concentrated on drug production,” the premier added. Afghanistan, Berlusconi observed, “is a difficult country, as demonstrated by the repeated failures to impose order there.

Not only is its society backwards but, as some have said, it is almost medieval.”

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Yousuf Raza Gilani, Prime Minister of Pakistan, on a visit to Downing Street, today rebuffed Gordon Brown’s comments that Pakistan could do more to apprehend Osama Bin Laden, says The Times. “I doubt the information which you are giving is correct because I don’t think Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan,” Gilani said.

Brown, speaking in Islamabad at the weekend, rebuked Pakistan, complaining that nobody had been able “to spot or detain or get close” to Bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. “If we are putting our strategy into place, Pakistan has to show that it can take on Al-Qaeda,” Brown said.

At today’s joint press conference, Brown praised Gilani for his role in taking on Al-Qaeda in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan. He also acknowledged the “huge sacrifices” made by Pakistan in combating terrorism.

“I think it’s important that the Prime Minister has signaled, as he has done in recent months, the real importance that Pakistan attaches to dealing with these problems and I can assure him of the UK’s full support in this matter,” Brown said.

Over 2,000 Pakistani civilians have died in terrorist attacks over the last year. These attacks have been sparked by government offensives against Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants operating in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan regions.

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US President Barack Obama’s plans to boost troop numbers in Afghanistan need to ensure there is ‘no adverse fallout’ on Pakistan, the country’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday, according to Dawn.com.

‘Pakistan looks forward to engaging closely with (the) US in understanding the full import of the new strategy and to ensure that there would be no adverse fallout on Pakistan,’ the ministry said in a statement.

Pakistani officials fear a dramatic increase in US troops in Afghanistan will push militants and refugees across its borders and complicate its own battle against the Taliban.

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports that Pakistan fears a US troop surge in Afghanistan would force fighters to flee to its border areas, particularly in the southwestern Baluchistan province where the government is already struggling to end a low-level insurgency by tribal fighters.

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President Asif Ali Zardari is facing mounting pressure to relinquish many of his powers, raising the spectre of a damaging political fracas just as the nation battles the Taliban, reports Pakistan’s Dawn.com.

Only 15 months into his rule, Zardari is contending with rock-bottom public opinion, strained relations with the powerful military, a bloody insurgency and a vocal opposition party challenging his rule.

He has lost much of the public sympathy that helped his Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) win elections in early 2008, soon after the assassination of his wife, the hugely popular two-time prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Political tensions that have simmered for months bubbled to the surface over the weekend, when a legal amnesty protecting Zardari and key aides from corruption cases expired, plunging the nation into uncertainly.

‘At this point of time when the country needs undivided attention to face its challenges, the government could get entangled in legal battles and their future is so uncertain,’ said independent political analyst Talat Masood.

The corruption amnesty, known as the National Reconciliation Ordinance, was passed by former military ruler Pervez Musharraf in 2007.

The president on Saturday gave control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, widely seen as a move to fend off criticism by making good on electoral promises to devolve greater power to parliament.

But this will unlikely be enough to appease his critics.

The opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz is calling on Zardari to relinquish powers he inherited from Musharraf to dissolve parliament and sack the prime minister — the so-called 17th amendment to the constitution.

A key problem, Masood said, was that Zardari had very few allies left. ‘The media and military are not very supportive, which means his future is really uncertain and he will have to surrender his powers.’

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