Tuesday, June 02, 2009 SAN SALVADOR: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday she's impressed by the Pakistani army's assault on Taliban militants who had captured much of Pakistan's Swat Valley."I am incredibly heartened by the resolve shown the Pakistani people, government and military," Clinton said in an interview with USA TODAY. She was in El Salvador for the inauguration of President Mauricio Funes.Pakistan's army has attacked Taliban strongholds throughout the Swat Valley, which is on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.Members of the Taliban, the fundamentalist Muslim movement that ruled Afghanistan until its ouster in 2001, had moved into the Swat Valley and gradually taken control. In April, Clinton told a congressional committee that the Pakistani government of President Asif Ali Zardari "is basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists."
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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