Pakistan needs to do more to close Afghan border: Rice

By Sue Pleming

PERTH, Australia (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday that Pakistan needed to do more to help curb the flow of militants across its border into Afghanistan as the Taliban had increased terrorist activity.

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith backed Rice's call, saying the porous northwest frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan was the "current international hotbed of terrorism" and could not be regarded as a bilateral border issue.

A resurgence in Taliban fighting in Afghanistan has seen militants seize remote outposts and force thinly spread security forces to respond in a game of cat-and-mouse. Many militants freely cross the Pakistan-Afghan border despite Pakistani military operations aimed at stemming the flow.

"What we need to do is to look hard at how the Taliban is regrouping, why the Taliban is fighting in the way that they are now," Rice told a news conference in Perth in western Australia.

"They generally are taken on and defeated pretty handily when they come in actual military formation. But there is an uptick in the terrorism, not just against forces but the Afghan people," she said. "In that regard everybody needs to do more, but Pakistan does need to do more.

"We understand that the northwest frontier area is difficult, but militants cannot be allowed to organize there and plan there and engage across the border."

U.S. officials have long been frustrated at what they view as Pakistan's failure to do enough to combat militants along its border with Afghanistan, where the United States has some 35,000 troops, many of whom are fighting the Taliban insurgency.

Pakistan said on Wednesday it would not allow Islamist militants to plot attacks on its soil, nor let foreign troops take military action on its territory.  Continued...