Nigeria Content Online

Pakistan’s Taliban threatened on Friday to launch attacks in the
United States and Europe “very soon.” The warning came after a renewal of
militant violence in Pakistan this week that is piling pressure on a
U.S.-backed government overwhelmed by the flood crisis.

“We will launch attacks in America and Europe very soon,” Qari
Hussain Mehsud, a senior Pakistani Taliban leader and mentor of suicide
bombers, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

A suicide bomber struck at a rally in the Pakistani city of
Quetta on Friday, killing at least 54 people in the second major attack this
week.

The attack on the Shi’ite rally expressing solidarity with the
Palestinian people came as the United States said the devastating floods are
likely to hold up army offensives against Taliban insurgents.

“Unfortunately the flooding in Pakistan is probably going to
delay any operations by the Pakistani army in North Waziristan for some period
of time,” U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in Afghanistan where he is
visiting U.S. troops.

Senior police official Hamid Shakeel told Reuters that at least
54 people were killed and about 160 wounded in Quetta.

Dozens of dead and wounded lay in pools of blood after the blast
that also engulfed vehicles in flames.

Hours later, the al Qaeda-linked Taliban took responsibility for
the attack, saying it was revenge for killings of radical Sunni clerics by
Shi’ites, further challenging the unpopular civilian government. “We take pride
in taking responsibility for the Quetta attack,” Mehsud told Reuters.

Earlier in the day, the Taliban also claimed responsibility for
bombings on Wednesday at a Shi’ite procession in the eastern city of Lahore in
which at least 33 people died. These blasts were the first major attack since
flood waters tore through the country. The Taliban and their allies often
target religious minorities in a campaign to destabilize the government.

The Taliban said the U.S. decision to put it on its list of
terrorist organizations was a sign of being scared.

Aside from its battles against homegrown Taliban, Pakistan is
under intense American pressure to tackle Afghan Taliban fighters who cross the
border into Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas to attack U.S.-led NATO troops.

The United States has stepped up missile strikes by pilotless
drone aircraft against militant targets in Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal lands
since the start of 2010. On Friday, U.S. drones fired missiles at two targets
in North Waziristan tribal region, killing seven militants, including two
foreigners, intelligence officials said.

Pakistan has said the army would decide when to carry out a
full-fledged assault in North Waziristan, where Washington says anti-American
militants enjoy safe havens, at the time it considers appropriate.

In another attack in the northwest, a suicide bomber killed one
person outside a mosque of the Ahmadi sect, who consider themselves Muslims but
whom Pakistan declares non-Muslims.

Attention has focused on the Pakistani Taliban again after U.S.
prosecutors this week charged its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, in a plot that
killed seven CIA employees at an American base in Afghanistan last December.

Islamist charities, some of them linked to militant groups, have
at the same time joined in the relief effort for the millions affected by the
worst floods in the nation’s history.

U.S. officials are concerned that the involvement of hardline
groups in flood relief will undermine the fight against militancy in Pakistan
as well Afghanistan.

Economic crisis

Anger is spreading over the government’s sluggish response to
the floods, raising the possibility of social unrest.

Pakistan is also facing economic catastrophe, with the floods
causing damage the government has estimated at $43 billion, almost a quarter of
the south Asian nation’s 2009 GDP.

Some relief has come from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
It will give Pakistan $450 million in emergency flood aid and disburse funds in
September to help the economy cope with the devastation.

Talks in Washington with a delegation led by Pakistan’s Finance
Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh on the terms of an $11 billion IMF loan program
left him satisfied with the country’s commitment to reforms, IMF chief
Dominique Strauss-Kahn said.

Under the 2008 IMF loan program, Islamabad promised to implement
tax and energy sector reforms and give full autonomy to the State Bank of
Pakistan.