Bush says US, Pakistan targeting Al-Qaeda 'safe-haven'

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush on Saturday linked the US global campaign against Al-Qaeda to Pakistan's efforts to quell Islamist violence, including the storming of a pro-Taliban mosque last week.

In his weekly radio address, Bush expressed full US support for Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's efforts "to rid all of Pakistan of extremism" including an Al-Qaeda "safe haven" in tribal areas.

Bush called the establishment of such harbors, detailed in a recent US national intelligence estimate, "one of the most troubling" setbacks to the US war on terrorism since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The US president, weighed down by the unpopular Iraq war, said Musharraf recognized that a September 2006 deal with tribal chiefs to police their own region had failed and that he was "taking active steps to correct it."

"Earlier this month, he sent in Pakistani forces to go after radicals who seized control of a mosque, and then he delivered a speech vowing to rid all of Pakistan of extremism," the US president said.

"Pakistani forces are in the fight, and many have given their lives. The United States supports them in these efforts. And we will work with our partners to deny safe haven to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Pakistan -- or anywhere else in the world," Bush said.

Musharraf is battling a wave of Islamist violence, sparked by the bloody storming by government forces last week of the pro-Taliban Red Mosque in Islamabad.

The death toll from the Islamist carnage passed 200 in less than a week Friday, after another suicide attack killed four people in the tribal area of North Waziristan, where militants last Sunday tore up a shaky ceasefire pact.