U.S. commander orders up plans on Pakistan

updated 10:18 p.m. ET Jan. 23, 2008

WASHINGTON - The commander of U.S. forces in Central Asia has launched planning for more extensive use of U.S. troops to train Pakistani armed forces, a senior defense official said Wednesday.

Adm. William J. Fallon, commander of U.S. Central Command, issued a planning order, an internal instruction to lower-level commanders, to propose ideas for a long-term approach to helping Pakistan combat what has become an expanding, homegrown insurgency that threatens the stability of the government.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the order has not been made public.

A central assumption in the planning is that no such U.S. training contribution would be made without the Pakistani government's prior approval, the official said.

Fallon was in Pakistan this week meeting with senior Pakistani military officials.

In an interview last week during a conference with Middle Eastern defense chiefs in Florida, Fallon said Pakistan is taking a more welcoming view of U.S. suggestions for using American troops to train and advise its own forces in the fight against anti-government extremists.

Fallon said he believes increased violence inside Pakistan in recent months has led Pakistani leaders to conclude that they must focus more intensively on extremist al-Qaida hideouts near the border with Afghanistan.

"They see they've got real problems internally," Fallon said. "My sense is there is an increased willingness to address these problems, and we're going to try to help them." He said U.S. assistance would be "more robust," but he offered few details. "There is more willingness to do that now" on Pakistan's part, he said.

U.S. anxiety about Pakistan's stability
The Bush administration's anxiety about Pakistan's stability has grown in recent months, not only because of its potential implications for U.S. stability efforts in neighboring Afghanistan but also because of worry about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met Wednesday with Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf, the highest-level meeting of U.S. and Pakistan officials since the assassination last month of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. While Rice praised Musharraf as a steadfast ally and promised continued U.S. support, she pressed him to keep his commitment to democracy and to free and fair elections in February.

At the Pentagon, one of Fallon's subordinate commanders, Army Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, said the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan is unlikely to stage a spring offensive in the volatile eastern region bordering Pakistan.

Rodriguez, who commands U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, told a Pentagon news conference that Taliban and al-Qaida fighters operating from havens in the largely ungoverned tribal areas of western Pakistan appear to have shifted their focus toward targets inside Pakistan rather than across the border in Afghanistan.

"I don't think there'll be a big spring offensive this year," Rodriguez said.

That is partly due to ordinary Afghans' disillusionment with the Taliban movement, he said, and partly because the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters see new opportunities to accelerate instability inside Pakistan. He also said Afghan security forces are becoming more effective partners with U.S. forces.

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