RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AFP) — Pakistan will launch a major operation "any time from now" to clear militants loyal to a pro-Taliban cleric from a scenic northwestern valley, an army general said Saturday.
Major General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of military operations for the Pakistan army, said he hoped the mountainous Swat area would be reopened for tourism by the end of December.
He said five days of clashes in which the army reports around 100 militants have been killed are only a prelude to the impending large-scale offensive.
"Our bases have been strengthened in Mingora and Besham and we are going to launch a major operation," Pasha told journalists at army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, referring to two main towns in the region.
"The operation will start any time from now. The concept is to clear Swat of militants," he added.
"For the moment we are just picking up anybody visible and pounding any known hideouts with helicopters."
The announcement came as US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte held talks with President Pervez Musharraf aimed at urging the key US ally in the "war on terror" to end a state of emergency declared two weeks ago.
Insurgent advances in and around Swat have embarrassed the government of Musharraf, who cited growing Islamic militancy as one of the key reasons for imposing emergency rule.
He has since ordered the regular army -- rather than the locally recruited paramilitary forces -- to take the lead in tackling the unrest, which has spilled over from the neighbouring tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
Unrest erupted in Swat in July when fugitive rebel leader, pro-Taliban cleric Maulana Fazlullah, launched a campaign for the imposition of harsh Sharia law in the valley.
Fazlullah is nicknamed "Mullah Radio" because he runs a pirate FM radio station that calls for a holy war on government forces.
Pasha said that up to 500 Islamist fighters were believed to be holed up in the Swat valley, led by a "hardcore" of 50 mostly foreign militants, especially Uzbeks.
He said most of them had come from the tribal zones of Waziristan and Bajaur, which have previously been pinpointed by US officials as a breeding ground for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
The general added that the army would use "surgical strikes" to avoid civilian casualties.
"Our main goal is to avoid collateral damage. We would have finished the job (already) in two days or even two hours if there were no civilians there, we absolutely want to avoid civilian casualties," Pasha said.
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