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Today, the hopes that those civilian militias inspired are gone, brushed away by the realization that Pakistanis can do little to stem the Taliban advance if their government and military will not help them.

The peace deal the military struck with the Taliban in February in neighboring Swat further demoralized people in Buner. Residents and local officials said they asked themselves how they could continue to resist the Taliban when the military had abandoned the effort. The Taliban were emboldened by the deal: it called for the institution of Shariah, the strict legal code of Islam based on the Koran, throughout Malakand Agency, which includes Swat and Buner. It allowed the Taliban amnesty for their killings, floggings and destruction of girls schools in Swat.

Still, when the Taliban rolled into Buner from Swat through the town of Gokan on April 5, a well-to-do businessman, Fateh Mohammed, organized another posse of civilian fighters to take on the militants in the town of Sultanwas. Five civilians and three policemen were killed, he said. Some newspaper reports said 17 Taliban were killed.

At that point, the chief government official in charge of Malakand, Mohammed Javed, proposed what he called peace talks. Mr. Javed, an experienced bureaucrat in the Pakistani civil service, was appointed in late February as the main government power broker in Malakand even though he was known to be sympathetic to the Taliban, a senior government official in North-West Frontier Province said. The government had been under pressure to bring calm to Swat and essentially capitulated to Taliban demands for Mr. Javed’s appointment, the official said.

In an apparent acknowledgment that Mr. Javed had been too sympathetic to the Taliban, the government announced Saturday that he had been replaced by Fazal Karim Khattack.

In what some residents in Swat and now in Buner say had been a pattern of favorable decisions led by Mr. Javed on behalf of the Taliban, the talks in Buner turned out to be a “betrayal,” said a former police officer from the area, who was afraid to be identified.

To bolster their strength, and insinuate themselves in Buner, the Taliban also relied heavily on the adherents of a hard-line militant group, the Movement for the Implementation of the Shariah of Muhammad, which has agitated for Islamic law in Pakistan. Their leader, Sufi Mohammed, comes from the region around Swat and Buner and has whipped up local support and intimidated Taliban opponents.

early last week the Taliban showed their power by ordering the state courts shut. They announced that they would open Islamic courts, practicing Shariah, by the end of the month. The militants have also placed a tax payable to the Taliban on all marble quarried at mines, said a senior police officer who worked in Buner.

The police were so intimidated they mostly stayed inside station houses, he said. “They are setting up a parallel government.”

With their success in Buner, the Taliban felt flush with success and increasingly confident that they could repeat the template, residents and analysts said. In the main prize, the richest and most populous province, Punjab, in eastern Pakistan, the Taliban are relying on the sleeper cells of other militant groups, including the many fighters who had been trained by the Pakistani military for combat in Kashmir, and now felt abandoned by the state, they said.

It would not be difficult for the Taliban to seize Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, by shutting down the airport and blocking the two main thoroughfares from Islamabad, a Western official with long experience in the province said. At midweek, a convoy of heavily armed Taliban vehicles was seen barreling along the four-lane motorway between Islamabad and Peshawar, according to Mr. Sherpao, the former minister of the interior.

Across North-West Frontier Province, the Taliban are rapidly consolidating power by activating cells that consisted of a potent mix of jihadist groups, he said.

The government agreed to Mohammed's demands in an effort to halt violent intimidation by Taliban forces that the army was unable to quell despite months of operations in the former tourist haven. In recent interviews, Swati leaders and refugees described armed men in black turbans whipping suspected thieves on the spot, cutting off the ears and noses of village elders who opposed them, and selling videos of police beheadings. "We really had no other choice. We had no power to crush the militants, and people were desperate for peace," said Jafar Shah, a Swati legislator. His Awami National Party, though historically secular, sponsored the sharia deal. "Now people are calling us Taliban without beards," he said ruefully, "but it was the only option available."

"The government made a big mistake to give these guys legal cover for their agenda. Now they are going to be battle-ready to struggle for the soul of Pakistan," said Rifaat Hussain, a professor of security studies at Quaid-i-Azam university here. He predicted a further surge in the suicide bombings that have recently become an almost daily occurrence across the country.

Mohammed's dramatic speech echoed a rousing sermon in Islamabad on Friday by another radical cleric, Maulana Abdul Aziz, who appeared at the Red Mosque in the capital after nearly two years in detention and urged several thousand chanting followers to launch a crusade for sharia nationwide.

Provincial and federal officials also hoped their show of good faith would halt further insurgent inroads and buy time for foreign aid programs to shore up the impoverished northwest against the Islamists' message of swift justice and social equality. Instead, the evidence suggests that the extremist forces have drawn the opposite lesson from their victory in Swat and are gearing up to carry their armed crusade for a punitive, misogynistic form of Islam into new areas. There have been numerous reports of Taliban fighters entering districts south and west of Swat, where they have brandished weapons, bombed and occupied buildings, arrested aid workers, and killed female activists.

Baitullah Mehsud, the man accused by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence of masterminding the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Although Mehsud is the nominal chief of the TTP, he has plenty of rivals, even in his native South Waziristan. Two major tribes populate South Waziristan: the Mehsuds and the Wazirs. The Wazirs dominate Wana, the main city in South Waziristan. But the ranking Taliban leader from the Wazirs, Maulvi Nazir, is a darling of Pakistan’s military establishment.

You’re probably scratching your head right now, a bit confused. You see, Nazir is only interested in fighting U.S., Afghan, and NATO forces across the border. He is not part of the TTP and has not been involved in the wave of violence sweeping Pakistan of late. Therefore, in the minds of Pakistani generals, he is a “good” Taliban versus Baitullah Mehsud, who is, in their mind, unequivocally “bad.” That’s just one example of Talibs living in Pakistan who do not necessarily come under the title “Pakistani Taliban” or the “Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan” moniker.

In Swat Valley, where Islamabad recently signed a peace treaty with the Taliban, the fissures among the militants are more generational. Swat, unlike South Waziristan, is part of NWFP and shares no border with Afghanistan. In the late 1980s, a group calling itself the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, TNSM or the Movement for the Establishment of the Law of Mohammed, launched a drive to impose Islamic law in Swat and its environs.

After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the leader of TNSM, Sufi Mohammed, organized a group of madrasa students and led them across the border to combat the Americans. But only Sufi Mohammed returned. The legions who had followed him were “martyred,” or so he told their parents. Sufi Mohammed was thrown in jail by then president and Army chief Pervez Musharraf, and so he named his son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, to run TNSM in his stead. But Fazlullah had wider ambitions and assembled a several-hundred-man army vowing to fight the Pakistani government. The senior leadership of TNSM soon disowned Fazlullah, who happily embarked on his own and is now Mehsud’s deputy in the TTP. For the past year and a half, Fazlullah’s devotees have bombed, kidnapped, and assassinated anyone who’s dared to challenge their writ in Swat.

By 2008, Sufi Mohammed looked like a moderate in comparison to his son-in-law. So the Pakistani government asked him to mediate. Perhaps he could cool Fazlullah down. The recent treaty you’ve heard about in Swat is between the Pakistani government and Sufi Mohammed, who has pledged to bring Fazlullah on board. So far, the treaty has held, unless you count the soldiers who were killed by Fazlullah’s Talibs for not “informing the Taliban of their movements.”

Two weeks ago the Taliban occupied a Sufi shrine in Buner, accusing locals of using it for "un-Islamic" practices. On Wednesday they swept through the main town, Daggar. Gun-toting militants looted aid agency offices, stole western-funded vehicles and forced police to retreat into their stations.

On Wednesday the US secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, accused President Asif Ali Zardari's government of "basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists". After an outcry from Pakistani officials, she modified her tone yesterday, conceding there was an "increasing awareness" of the threat within government circles.

The army spokesman, General Athar Abbas, said that western fears were "overblown" and called for patience in dealing with the militants. Taliban violence was swinging divided public opinion against the militants, he said. "We are giving them enough rope to hang themselves."

Certainly a new sense of urgency is gripping Pakistan's political class, where it has been fashionable to call the fight against the Taliban "America's war". The opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, urged the government to contain the militants within Swat.

A more surprising statement came from Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the leader of the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, who warned the national assembly on Wednesday: "If Taliban continue to move at this pace they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad."

But there is little sense yet of a concerted effort to push back the militants, who have exposed the fragility of the federation and resurrected fears that the country is heading towards break-up.

The Buner assault is likely to strain the controversial Swat peace accord. In exchange for peace, the provincial government, headed by the secular Awami National party, agreed in February to introduce sharia law in Swat and seven adjoining districts known as Malakand Division - an area of about 10,000 square miles that accounts for one third of the North West Frontier province. But since the deal, the Taliban have established control over much more than the judicial system.

In Mingora, the valley's commercial hub, police have been reduced to directing traffic and secular politicians have fled, many under death threats.

The turmoil in Buner, a district of about 1 million people, does not pose an immediate threat to Islamabad, which lies across a mountain range and the river Indus. But the speed and aggression of the militant advance has stoked a sense of alarm across the country, even among normally conservative forces.

"If Taliban continue to move at this pace they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad," Maulana Fazlur Rehman, leader of the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema e Islam party, told the national assembly yesterday.The Taliban could soon seize control of Tarbela Dam, a strategic reservoir, Rehman warned.

Blame for the turmoil has focused on a controversial peace deal the provincial government signed with militants in February. Hoping to defuse the insurgency, the Awami National party-led government acceded to demands for sharia law in Swat and seven surrounding districts, known collectively as Malakand Division.The changes were ratified by the national parliament last week with cross-party consensus. Since then, the Taliban have moved to establish much more than judicial control.

In Mingora, the commercial hub of Swat, the police retain a low-key presence, reduced to directing traffic. Most politicians have fled, many under death threats. Many residents said it was not clear who was in control of the town.

In Imam Dheri, the Taliban headquarters near Mingora, a Taliban spokesman, Muslim Khan, told the Guardian their goal was the establishment of an Islamic caliphate first in Pakistan and then across the Muslim world."Democracy is a system for European countries. It is not for Muslims," he said. "This is not just about justice. It should be in education, health, economics. Everything should be under sharia."

The clashes started when the government deployed troops in some areas of the district over the weekend.

The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says this was presumably to prevent an incursion by militants similar to the recent one in Buner district.

The Taleban spokesman in Swat, Muslim Khan, accused the government of violating the terms of the peace agreement in Swat. The Taleban warned of militant attacks in all parts of Malakand division - the group of six districts where the new Sharia law has been enforced - if the military operation in Dir was not halted.

The government and the military say they still want to abide by the terms of the Swat peace deal and consider it intact. However, they believe that the Taleban are yet to fulfil their part of the deal, which is to disarm and to concede administrative power to government departments.

In Buner, the presence of the Taleban continues in main towns despite an announcement on Friday that they would leave the area and go back to their bases in Swat. Troops have still not advanced beyond a border village.

Yet Pakistani authorities deployed just several hundred poorly paid and equipped constabulary forces to Buner, who were repelled in a clash with the insurgents, leaving one police officer dead

The limited response set off fresh scrutiny of Pakistan’s military, a force with 500,000 soldiers and a similar number of reservists. The army receives $1 billion in American military aid each year but has repeatedly declined to confront the Taliban-led insurgency, even as it has bled out of Pakistan’s self-governed tribal areas into Pakistan proper in recent months.

The military remains fixated on training and deploying its soldiers to fight the country’s archenemy, India. It remains ill equipped for counterinsurgency, analysts say, and top officers are deeply reluctant to be pressed into action against insurgents who enjoy family, ethnic and religious ties with many Pakistanis.

In the limited engagements in which regular army troops have fought the Taliban in the tribal areas and sections of the Swat Valley, they not only failed to dislodge the Taliban, but also convinced many Pakistanis that their own military was as much of a menace as the Islamic radicals it sought to repel, residents and analysts say.

In Washington, a Defense Department official who is monitoring Pakistan closely said that the poorly trained constabulary force was sent Thursday because Pakistani Army troops were not available, and Pakistani generals were reluctant to pull reinforcements off the border with India — something American officials have encouraged them to do.

Instead, the military, which is stretched thin in the areas along the Afghan border, has favored negotiations, and the civilian government has acquiesced. “The government is too worried about its own political survival to take on the militants,” the Defense Department official said.

Where it has engaged the insurgents, the Pakistani Army, untrained in counterinsurgency, has become reviled by the civilian population for its heavy-handed tactics, which have cost many lives while failing to stop the Taliban. At the same time, the police and paramilitary forces have proved too weak to stand up to the militants. In Buner, desperate residents had resorted to forming their own militias, as much to keep out the military as the Taliban. That effort, too, has now failed.

On Capitol Hill, legislators preparing to introduce a bill to provide Pakistan with $7.5 billion in nonmilitary aid over five years may face a steep challenge.

In a sign of the urgency of the crisis, the special envoy for the region, Richard C. Holbrooke, is sending Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton memos several times a day with his latest reading of the situation in Pakistan, an American official said. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefly visited Pakistan on Wednesday night and Thursday from Afghanistan, to meet with Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistani Army chief of staff. An American official briefed on discussions said the Pakistani leadership was “very concerned.”

Buner (pronounced boo-NAIR), home to about one million people, lies in the heart of North-West Frontier Province, bordering seven other districts. Its capture not only advances the Taliban closer to the capital, but also gives the Taliban a vital hub to extend their reach.

More than 30 armed militants entered the Shangla district, east of the main Swat Valley and north of Buner, and were seen patrolling an area around Loch Bazaar, the independent channel Geo TV reported Thursday, quoting witnesses.Government officials also confirmed that militants have been seen in Totali, far south in Buner and close to the boundary with the Swabi district, which lies close to the main highways into the capital.

Armed militants have also been seen visiting mosques and patrolling in Rustam, a town on the boundary between Buner and the adjoining district of Mardan, said Riaz Khan, a lawyer living in Mardan, the second largest town in North-West Frontier Province. “People are anxious and in a state of fear,” he said.

The Taliban were making a concerted push into areas that overlook the capital, lawmakers and government officials in North-West Frontier Province said.

A powerful religious party leader, Fazlur Rehman, who is allied with the government, warned that militants had reached into the Mansehra district, close to the Tarbela Dam, a vital source of electricity to the center of the country.

“If the Taliban continue to move at this pace they will soon be knocking at the door of Islamabad,” he told Parliament on Wednesday, adding that Margalla Hills, north of the capital, seem to be the only hurdle to the Taliban advance.

The Pakistani Taliban, who number in the thousands across the tribal areas and the Swat region, have declared their aim of establishing Shariah rule throughout Pakistan. But for now, their expansion may be opportunistic and their strength sufficient only to establish local fiefdoms, or “micro-emirates of Shariah,” said Christine Fair, a senior research associate at the RAND Corporation.“I don’t know what the Taliban’s game plan is, but what seems apparent is the state has no game plan,” she said. “The Pakistani state is not able to stop them and they expand where they can.”

Musharraf: There are many Indian extremists who have links with extremists in Pakistan. So if the world is serious about combating terrorism, then don't leave India out. Originally, Richard Holbrooke was supposed to be the US special representative for all three countries, but the strong Indian lobby in America prevented that.

Musharraf: No, he is aiming at the right things. He is showing intentions of improving the dialogue with the Muslim world, which is good. He is right when he says that more forces must be deployed in Afghanistan. There is an intention of increasing funding for Pakistan, which is also good. But he also has to understand the reality in Pakistan and I am not sure he does.

Musharraf: One of the realities is that the Indian intelligence service RAW is interfering in our country. For example in Balochistan, our largest province bordering Iran and Afghanistan. One of the most brutal insurgents against our forces, Brahamdagh Bugti ...

Musharraf: ... he is sitting in Kabul, protected by the Afghan government and provided with weapons and money by the Indian intelligence agency RAW. He has his own training camps and sends his fighters to Balochistan where they terrorize people and damage the civil infrastructure. RAW is also interfering in the Swat Valley, I know that. Where do all these Taliban fighters in Swat get their arms and money from? From Afghanistan. The Indian consulates in Jallalabad and Kandahar only exist to be a thorn in the side of Pakistan.

SPIEGEL: Let us talk about the role of the ISI. A short time ago, US newspapers reported that ISI has systematically supported Taliban groups. Is that true? Musharraf: Intelligence always has access to other networks -- this is what Americans did with KGB, this is what ISI also does. You should understand that the army is on board to fight the Taliban and al-Qaida. I have always been against the Taliban. Don't try to lecture us about how we should handle this tactically. I will give you an example: Siraj Haqqani ... SPIEGEL: ... a powerful Taliban commander who is allegedly secretly allied with the ISI. Musharraf: He is the man who has influence over Baitullah Mehsud, a dangerous terrorist, the fiercest commander in South Waiziristan and the murderer of Benazir Bhutto as we know today. Mehsud kidnapped our ambassador in Kabul and our intelligence used Haqqani's influence to get him released. Now, that does not mean that Haqqani is supported by us. The intelligence service is using certain enemies against other enemies. And it is better to tackle them one by one than making them all enemies.

Musharraf: The Americans are hated in the country today. The US drone attacks, which we have been living with for months now, are most unpopular -- there is no doubt about it. Regardless whether they are killing terrorists, Taliban or Al-Qaida-figures or not, there are too many civilian victims. The deployment of drones has to be stopped.

SPIEGEL: The US military eliminated several high-ranking al-Qaida figures through drone attacks. What would be a possible alternative? Musharraf: We have to find a way or method with which the Pakistani army could conduct these attacks itself. There would immediately be much better acceptance amongst the populice and we would cause less collateral damage and there would be fewer civilian victims.

Nearly 1.5 million people have been displaced by this month's fighting in the north-western region, and about two million since last August, the United Nations refugee agency says.

In Swat, the army says that about 15,000 members of the security forces are fighting between 4,000 and 5,000 militants. It says more than 1,000 militants and more than 50 soldiers have been killed since the offensive began.

Administration officials in NWFP have confirmed that Taleban fighters have started to leave.

the BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad says circumstances suggest the militants are now under pressure and that a national consensus is building among the public and political parties that they must be challenged with force.

Sympathy for the militant movement has been on the decline, our correspondent says, since the airing of footage showing a young girl being flogged as a punishment in Swat. Although the Taleban denied ordering the punishment, their public standing has plummeted.

The Taleban had been expected to lay down their arms under the peace deal and allow police and other officials to resume their duties. However, the Taleban had further consolidated their hold on Buner.

Once one of Pakistan's most popular holiday destinations, the Swat Valley is now mostly under Taleban control

The Swat Valley is only about 100km (62 miles) from Islamabad, and reports suggest the Taleban are trying to expand the area under their control.

Giving evidence in Washington to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mrs Clinton said the situation in Pakistan "poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world".

"I think the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taleban and the extremists," she said. She called on the Pakistani people to speak out "forcefully" against their government's policy, in what the BBC's Richard Lister in Washington called an unusual move.

The government's policy was conceding "more and more territory to the insurgents , to the Taleban, to al-Qaeda, to the allies that are in this terrorist syndicate", Mrs Clinton said. US President Barack Obama has put new emphasis on trying to resolve the security problems in Pakistan, our correspondent says, offering billions of dollars in aid but demanding greater co-operation from the government.

"I think that we can not underscore the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan," she said, describing the rebels as a "loosely-confederated group of terrorists and others seeking to overthrow the Pakistani state".

Sharia in Pakistan, as in Afghanistan, exists in tandem with a modern legal code but does not supersede it. Sharia courts rule on certain religious and moral issues, while other cases are tried by regular courts. Mohammed, Aziz and other radicals espouse a more severe version like the one Taliban rulers imposed on Afghanistan in the 1990s, which segregates women and imposes harsh punishments.

Supporters of the Swat agreement pointed out that residents have been demanding sharia for years to replace the slow, corrupt justice system. But Swati leaders said that the local version of Islamic law was traditionally moderate and that in elections last year Swatis voted overwhelmingly for two secular parties.

This week, after the peace accord was endorsed, officials and pro-government news media described the atmosphere in Swat as relieved and heading back to normalcy. But several people who visited the Swati capital of Mingora this week said they saw worried faces, no women in the markets, and clusters of black-turbaned men watching everyone closely.

The Taliban advance into Buner has brought heavy pressure on the military from the United States and other Western countries. It has also fortified a growing consensus among Pakistani politicians and the public that the Taliban have gone too far and that the military should act to contain the spread of the insurgency.

At a news conference, he played three tapes of what were described as telephone intercepts of the main Taliban leader, Mullah Fazlullah, talking to one of his commanders about making a show withdrawal for the news media while telling the fighters to put away their weapons and lie low.

Several events contributed to the shift among politicians and the public. Video of the flogging of a 17-year-old woman in Swat by the Taliban several weeks ago shocked many in the country. A radical cleric who helped negotiate the peace deal in Swat, Maulana Sufi Muhammad, said recently that Pakistani institutions like Parliament and the high courts were un-Islamic, a comment that angered politicians from all parties. Finally, the militants’ move into new districts last week impelled the Pakistani Army to move against the Taliban.

The 6,000 troops to be shifted had originally been on Pakistan’s western border but were sent to the Indian border in December, after the terrorists’ attack in Mumbai in which 163 people were killed the previous month. India had responded to the attack, which Indian and American officials concluded was planned in Pakistan and carried out by Pakistanis, by massing troops on the Pakistani border.

The promised redeployment, which will essentially return Pakistan’s military presence in the northwest to pre-Mumbai levels, comes as American and Pakistani officials are preparing for what are likely to be tense meetings in Washington next week between President Obama, President Zardari and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.

“Neither the Taliban nor the government forces seem to care about the well-being of the residents of Lower Dir,” Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director, said in a statement.

The government has warned that 500,000 people could try to leave if the peace deal formally breaks down, although the BBC's Mark Dummett, in Islamabad, says the army has not yet launched the offensive most are now expecting.

Afghan officials said Tuesday's violence broke out after more than 100 Taleban militants attacked a police checkpoint in Farah, in the far west of Afghanistan, killing three police.

The insurgents then reportedly moved to a nearby village where they killed three civilians who they accused of spying for the government. As the fighting continued, US airstrikes targeted militants thought to be sheltering in nearby houses. At least 25 Taleban fighters were reported to have died. But a growing number of reports from the area now suggest civilians were also seeking refuge in the buildings. Our correspondent in Kabul said local officials told him they saw the bodies of about 20 women and children in two trucks.

A spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said a team of observers sent to the site of the air strikes saw houses destroyed and dozens of dead bodies, including women and children. "We can absolutely confirm there were civilian casualties," Jessica Barry said.

The US military said coalition troops were called to assist Afghan forces as they attempted to fight off an insurgent attack.

now he has started a review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan intended to find a new strategy, and he signaled that reconciliation could emerge as an important initiative, mirroring the strategy used by Gen. David H. Petraeus in Iraq.

“If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of Al Qaeda in Iraq,” Mr. Obama said. At the same time, he acknowledged that outreach may not yield the same success. “The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex,” he said. “You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes. Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, and so figuring all that out is going to be much more of a challenge.”

administration officials have criticized the Pakistani government for its own reconciliation deal with local Taliban leaders in the Swat Valley, where Islamic law has been imposed and radical figures hold sway. Pakistani officials have sought to reassure administration officials that their deal was not a surrender to the Taliban, but rather an attempt to drive a wedge between hard-core Taliban leaders and local Islamists.

During the interview, Mr. Obama also left open the option for American operatives to capture terrorism suspects abroad even without the cooperation of a country where they were found. “There could be situations — and I emphasize ‘could be’ because we haven’t made a determination yet — where, let’s say that we have a well-known Al Qaeda operative that doesn’t surface very often, appears in a third country with whom we don’t have an extradition relationship or would not be willing to prosecute, but we think is a very dangerous person,” he said.“I think we still have to think about how do we deal with that kind of scenario,”

The president went on to say that “we don’t torture” and that “we ultimately provide anybody that we’re detaining an opportunity through habeas corpus to answer to charges.”Aides later said Mr. Obama did not mean to suggest that everybody held by American forces would be granted habeas corpus or the right to challenge their detention. In a court filing last month, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration position that 600 prisoners in a cavernous prison on the American air base at Bagram in Afghanistan have no right to seek their release in court.

Obama is calling for additional $1.5 billion in spending annually for five years to boost civilian development in Pakistan as part of his strategy for the region.

U.S. Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar introduced a bill on Monday to authorize the funds, primarily for projects like roads, schools and hospitals. Kerry said while the funding was mainly intended for civilian projects, the administration could submit a plan directing some of it to military uses. Congress is considering an additional $2.3 billion in aid for Pakistan, including $400 million for counterinsurgency.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accused Islamabad of abdicating to the Taliban by agreeing to impose Islamic law in the Swat valley and Obama has expressed concern the government is "very fragile" and unable to deliver basic services.

Hawks in the Pakistani establishment fear Karzai's government is too close to arch-rival India and see support for the Taliban as a way of maintaining influence in Afghanistan.