Pakistan seizes aide to "dead" Taliban chief

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan has captured a senior aide to Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban chief believed to have been killed this month in a missile strike by a U.S. drone, military officials said on Tuesday.

Maulvi Omar was captured by a pro-government militia in the Mohmand region on the Afghan border on Monday and had been handed over to government forces, one official said.

The arrest came as U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, was visiting Pakistan and coincided with reports of infighting within the Pakistani Taliban since the report of Mehsud's death on August 5.

Analysts said Omar, a former Mehsud spokesman, was not a military chief and his capture would have no direct impact on the insurgency, but he could provide information about Mehsud's network.

A senior military official initially said Omar would be paraded to the media, but later said the plan had been changed.

"Maulvi Omar is in our custody but it has not yet been decided whether to produce him before media," the official said.

An intelligence official in Mohmand said security agents had flown Omar and two colleagues captured with him to the northwestern city of Peshawar for interrogation.

The army has been battling Pakistani Taliban guerrillas loyal to Mehsud in different parts of the northwest for months.

Security forces have pushed back militants in their former bastion of Swat, northwest of Islamabad, and stepped up attacks on Mehsud and his men in South Waziristan on the Afghan border.

Omar was the spokesman for the Mehsud-led Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, a loose alliance of 13 militant factions, although several months ago he was removed as the chief spokesman for the alliance.

MONTHS BEFORE OFFENSIVE

Mehsud was an al Qaeda cohort blamed for a wave of bombings across Pakistan, including the 2007 assassination of former Prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Pakistani and U.S. officials are almost certain that Mehsud was killed along with his wife and some guards in the missile strike on his father-in-law's home in the South Waziristan.

However, his aides insist he is alive.

Omar was not believed to have been in South Waziristan when Mehsud was reported killed and was not likely to be able to confirm his death.

Holbrooke told reporters traveling with him to Pakistan at the weekend Mehsud was "gone" and it looked as if there was a struggle for succession among his commanders.

But a senior army commander said Pakistan would need months to prepare for a ground offensive against the Taliban in their South Waziristan stronghold.

After briefing Holbrooke on operations against militants, Lieutenant-General Nadeem Ahmed told reporters the army was trying to create the "right" conditions for a full-blown offensive in the rugged South region by imposing a blockade on entry and exit points and by pounding militants from the air.

Ahmed said the army was short of "the right kind of equipment" to mount a large-scale ground operation, and urged Holbrooke to help Pakistan obtain attack helicopters.

Ahmed told Holbrooke that Mehsud's death had a "psychological impact" on his group but added that the Taliban remained a potent force that could still "do something substantial."

This week, Islamabad police arrested another senior Taliban member, identified as Saifullah, who police said was planning to carry out attacks in the capital.

(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider and Adam Entous; Editing by Robert Birsel and Alex Richardson)