US special envoy Richard Holbrooke arrived in Islamabad on Saturday night for talks with top Pakistani leaders on a range of economic and security issues, officials said. This is Holbrooke's second visit to Pakistan in less than a month. His earlier visit was primarily focused on the plight of 1.9 million people displaced by fighting against Taliban in the north-west of the country.
"He (Holbrooke) is going to meet most senior level officials during his stay," US embassy spokesman Richard Snelsire told AFP. During his three-day stay in Islamabad, Holbrooke will hold talks with President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and army chief General Ashfaq Kayani.
"The talks will focus on a range of issues including rehabilitation of displaced people, the security situation in the north-west and tribal regions and presidential elections in Afghanistan," a foreign ministry official told AFP, referring to the August 20 poll in the neighbouring country.
US President Barack Obama, unveiling his new strategy to turn around the Afghan war, put Pakistan at the heart of the fight to defeat al Qaeda and vowed to boost US aid and assistance to the nuclear-armed Muslim nation. In early July, the US military launched one of its biggest offensives in Afghanistan, flying 4,000 US Marines into battle against the Taliban in Helmand, just across the border from Pakistan's insurgency-plagued south-west.
The US said it was sharing information with Islamabad about the offensive after Pakistani officials voiced fears it could see militants cross into Balochistan province, already gripped by Islamist, sectarian and regional violence. "Pakistan will also brief Holbrooke on the government's strategy for early rehabilitation of the displaced persons and reconstruction of property destroyed during the operation in the north-west," said the official.
The Pakistani army launched an offensive in late April to dislodge Taliban guerrillas from the districts of Buner, Lower Dir and Swat after rebels flouted a peace deal and marched further south towards Islamabad.
Swat slipped out of government control after radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah mounted a violent campaign in which his followers beheaded opponents, burnt schools and fought against government troops to enforce sharia law. Pakistan says more than 1,800 militants and 166 security personnel were killed in the offensive but the death tolls are impossible to verify independently.
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