Pentagon: Pakistan force near Afghanistan unchanged
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon has seen no signs that Pakistan is preparing to shift troops out of its tribal region near the Afghanistan border due to rising tensions with India, a U.S. defense official said on Tuesday.
"There are no indications that anything is happening. Nothing has happened or is planned to happen in that vein," said the defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the situation in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA.
"It's business as usual," the official added.
Under pressure from Washington, Pakistan has recently stepped up military operations against Islamist militant strongholds in the border region, used as a training and staging ground for attacks into Afghanistan.
But officials in Islamabad have warned that any deterioration of ties with India after last week's attacks in Mumbai would force Pakistan to divert troops to its Indian border and away from a U.S.-led anti-militant campaign on the Afghan frontier.
Indian investigators have said the Mumbai attackers had months of commando training in Pakistan by the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, blamed for a 2001 attack on India's parliament.
The U.S. defense official said there are believed to be 100,000 to 120,000 Pakistani troops in the tribal area, including 50,000 members of the paramilitary Frontier Corps.
(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Kristin Roberts)
