US, Pakistan to intensify fight against terror

ISLAMABAD, Jan 13 (AFP): The US and Pakistan vowed Tuesday to intensify a crackdown on militants hiding in lawless border areas, as top diplomat John Kerry urged renewed peace talks with India to strengthen regional stability.
Last month's shocking school massacre in Peshawar by the Pakistani Taliban triggered global outrage, and sharpened the focus on militant groups hiding in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region.
Islamabad began a full-scale offensive against Taliban and other militants in the North Waziristan tribal district in June, after ignoring US calls for action for years.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Pakistan's national security adviser Sartaj Aziz, Kerry said Pakistan deserved "enormous credit" for the operation.
"I emphasised that the US is committed to deepening our security relationship with Pakistan in order to eliminate threats in the border area and elsewhere," the US Secretary of State told reporters.
Last month's massacre killed 150 people, mostly schoolboys. In response the government announced plans for military courts and ended a moratorium on the death penalty for convicted militants.
Pakistan executed seven militants on Tuesday, bringing to 16 the number hanged since December.
The attack was "a reminder of the serious risk of allowing extremists to find space, and be able to command that space and operate within it", Kerry said.
Earlier in strategic talks with a top Pakistani official, he said the operation in Waziristan had already led to "significant results".
Kerry later met senior Pakistani military commanders at their headquarters in Rawalpindi to discuss joint military efforts and plans for greater intelligence-sharing.
The US has carried out a series of drone strikes in the tribal regions since Islamabad resumed its own offensive there, raising speculation that the two nations' militaries are working together on Pakistani soil.
Pakistani officials however denounce the drone attacks as a violation of sovereignty.
Pakistani officials have said Kerry plans to visit the Peshawar school where the massacre took place. But the State Department has not confirmed any trip and Kerry was due to leave later Tuesday for Geneva.
Kerry warned that all terror groups-such as the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network and the Lashkar-e-Taiba-"continue to pose a threat not just to Pakistan and its neighbours but also to the United States and the world".
Some analysts believe Pakistan's security services see the Haqqanis as an "asset" and maintain close links with them.
But Aziz vowed Tuesday that Pakistan would take action "without discrimination, against all groups" seen as spreading terror both in Pakistan and its neighbours, adding that the Haqqani network's infrastructure had been "totally destroyed" by the North Waziristan operation.
Meanwhile:  US Secretary of State John Kerry appealed Tuesday to arch-rivals India and Pakistan to resume stalled peace talks, saying Washington was "deeply concerned" about a surge in violence on their de facto border in Kashmir.
"It is profoundly in the interests of Pakistan and India to move their relationship forward," he told reporters in a joint press conference with Pakistani national security adviser Sartaj Aziz.
"This is the hardest kind of work. It means you have to put a lot of time and effort into overcoming historical mistrust and past events, enmities," Kerry said.
During earlier talks with Aziz, the top US diplomat said the US remains "deeply concerned by the increasing spate of increased violence along the working boundary and the Line of Control (in Kashmir)".
Another report adds:  While last week's attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo sparked global outrage, dozens of people in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar paid tribute Tuesday to the brothers who carried out the murders.
Though small in scale, the event was indicative of the anger that portrayals of the Prophet Mohammed can ignite in some parts of the Muslim world, particularly in Pakistan where tough blasphemy laws make insulting the Prophet a crime punishable by death.
Local cleric Maulana Pir Mohammad Chishti led some 60 people in prayers for Cherif and Said Kouachi, who shot dead 12 people at the magazine's offices on January 7, as worshippers called the pair "martyrs".
They also chanted "Death to Hebdo publications" and "Long live Cherif Kouachi, long live Said Kouachi", and kissed posters of the brothers who were shot dead by police two days later.