WASHINGTON, May 24: The Pentagon has warned that Pakistan needs several years to defeat “Al Qaeda-linked terrorists operating in its tribal region along the Afghan border”.

Also, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan has said that peace talks between militants and Islamabad will make it easier for militants to cross the border.

“We are troubled by the negotiations and the possibility of yet another peace deal in the northwest,” US Army General Dan McNeill said. “We keep our eyes on Pakistan. It seems to me to be very dysfunctional right now.”

In a report sent to Congress on Friday, the US Department of Defence acknowledged that last year Pakistan deployed 30,000 additional troops to the Fata and made significant efforts to eliminate the so-called Al Qaeda safe havens in the region.

But “it is troubling” that despite these efforts, safe havens in the Fata “have grown in recent years”.

The Pentagon report made no reference to Pakistan’s negotiations with militants but noted that Al Qaeda and other extremists continued to hide in the Fata, where they were able to recruit, train, and target US and western interests.

The report also claimed that seminaries in Pakistan continued to promote jihad and martyrdom and provided potential operatives for acts of violence in Afghanistan.

The report warned that it might take several years before Pakistan succeeded in implementing a comprehensive strategy to render the tribal areas permanently inhospitable to terrorists.

The report noted that 700 Pakistanis had been killed in suicide attacks since July 2007.

The report noted that the US was working with Pakistan on a six-year programme to help strengthen the Pakistani military and security forces but cautioned that it would take time to implement the plan.

“It may be several years before Pakistan’s comprehensive strategy to render the remote tribal areas permanently inhospitable to terrorists, insurgents and other violent extremists can be measured for success.”

Besides building new training facilities for the Frontier Corps, the United States was also providing anti-insurgency training to Pakistani commandos, the report said.

The US was also funding the creation of a 700-member special force of Pashtun tribesmen that would act as a rapid response force for dealing with emergencies. The Pentagon had provided $150 million this year for these programmes and was seeking another $200 million for next year, said the report.

Meanwhile, in a conference call from Kabul with defence specialists in Washington, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan expressed serious concerns about Pakistan’s latest peace moves in the Fata.

The Pentagon’s news service, which reported Gen McNeill’s remarks, noted that terrorist attacks had killed more than 2,000 people in Pakistan last year.

The report also noted that the number of terrorist actions had risen since Pakistan began truce talks last month and April saw 50 per cent more incidents than the same period last year.

“We’ve got good data that shows whenever there is dialogue or a peace deal consummated, our aggregated number of untoward events typically goes up,” Gen McNeill said. “The good news is we have more force in regional command east than we did last year, so I think we can handle what comes.”

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has a force of about 47,000 soldiers in Afghanistan fighting a Taliban-led insurgency.

Another report by the US Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point claimed that Baitullah Mehsud commanded as many as 5,000 fighters and formed an alliance of about five pro-Taliban groups in December, known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.