ISLAMABAD - Prime Minister Mohammad Nawaz Sharif has constituted a national cabinet coordination committee to oversee the ongoing military operation against militants in North Waziristan Agency.
The PM media section informed that Premier Sharif would himself head this special body which would not only oversee the day to day progress on the ongoing military operation against militants but would also deal with the issues relating to the exodus of people from the troubled areas.
The committee members included interior, defence, information, planning and SAFRON ministers, a representative of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, secretary interior, secretary finance, chief secretary KP, chairman NDMA, chief of general staff, director general military operations, director general Inter-Services Intelligence and director general ISPR.
The committee would meet regularly and update the prime minister on the developments about the operation on regular basis while it also monitor and come up with suggestions on handling of the expected mass-scale migration from the troubled areas.
Sources in the government informed that PM Sharif had both formal and informal discussion on the launch of operation in the NWA and its expected fallouts in the settled areas.
The constitution of the committee was the result of these discussions with both civil and military leadership on the same page to tackle the matter proactively with the aim to control and contain the expected terrorist activities in the settled areas in retaliation of the ongoing precise aerial bombardment on the militant hideouts in Waziristan.
Sources in the government further informed that the prime minister has directed for enhanced coordination among the law enforcement agencies and pro-active role of agencies to deal with the current situation wherein the sensitive government installations are under serious threat.
The sources further said the inclusion of the KP government in the committee was also aimed at taking them on board on the steps being taken by the government to crush the militants across the country and being the frontline province due to its proximity with the troubled areas their role become quite important, a senior leader in the ruling PML-N said while commenting on the composition of the committee.
In the closed door informal meetings held at the PM House, the overall security plan also came under discussion and it was decided that all the provinces were already given the alerts about the expected terrorist attacks in some of the major cities across the country with the federal capital, Lahore and Karachi could be the priority areas for the terrorists who had already come up with serious threats in this regard.
In another development the prime minister rang up Afghan President Hamid Karzai seeking his support in the ongoing operation against militants and requested him to beef up security deployment on their side of Pak-Afghan border to check the crossing over of the militants into Afghanistan.
The sources in the government said that the response of the Afghan president was overwhelmingly positive and he said that both the countries were facing the menace of terrorism and for bringing normalcy and permanent peace to the region both the countries will have to work together.