ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan arrested a former Taliban defence minister regarded as a top figure in the Afghan insurgency, a Pakistani intelligence official said Friday.
Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, considered a key associate of fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar, is the most senior leader from the hard-line militia to be arrested since U.S.-led troops ousted it from power in 2001.
Akhund was among five Taliban suspects arrested in a raid on a home in the southwestern city of Quetta earlier this week, said the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to comment to journalists.
There was no immediate official confirmation from the Pakistani government. Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, a senior Interior Ministry official handling counterterrorism issues, denied late Thursday that a top Taliban figure had been arrested. Tariq Khosa, police chief of Baluchistan province where Quetta is located, said he was not aware of Akhund's arrest.
The New York Times, citing two unnamed Pakistani government officials, said Akhund was arrested on Monday, the day Vice President Dick Cheney visited Pakistan, which is under growing international pressure to crackdown on Taliban militants believed to seek sanctuary on its soil. Pakistan has repeatedly denied claims from Afghan and Western officials that insurgent leaders shelter in Quetta.
During his visit, Cheney had expressed concern to President Gen. Pervez Musharraf over al-Qaeda regrouping inside Pakistan's tribal regions and an expected Taliban spring offensive in neighboring Afghanistan.
The intelligence official said Akhund's arrest was a planned operation and was not linked to Cheney's visit.
He said the raid was carried out by Pakistani security officials, acting on a tip from U.S. officials. He said that seven more Taliban suspects had been arrested, also in Quetta, later in the week.
He had no information about the identities of the other suspects.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler said he had no information and the CIA duty officer did not respond to a phone message seeking comment.
Taliban sources could not be reached in the early hours of Friday for comment on the reports of Akhund's arrest.
Taliban-led militants have staged a resurgence over the past year, threatening the elected Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai. Bitter fighting with Afghan, NATO and U.S. forces during 2006 left thousands dead, and militant leaders are threatening a new wave of attacks as winter subsides in the coming weeks.
The surge in violence has badly strained Pakistan's relations with Afghanistan, which claims that the Taliban movement is commanded from Quetta. Karzai has claimed that Omar himself is staying in Quetta.
The presence of Taliban leaders in southwestern city, which is heavily populated by Afghan migrants, is hard to substantiate. The clearest public sign, prior to Akhund's reported capture, was the arrest there in October 2005 of a Taliban spokesman, Latif Hakimi, who lived in the city with his family.
In recent months, NATO has reported a string of successes in killing or arresting Taliban commanders in Afghanistan: most significantly, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani -- another top Omar lieutenant -- who was killed in an airstrike in southern Helmand province, just across the border from Pakistan, in December.
Musharraf and U.S. officials have said that Pakistan -- a former supporter of the Taliban regime but now a key ally of Washington in its war on terror -- helped in the operation to eliminate Osmani, a top military commander for the insurgents in their southern Afghan heartland.
Speaking in early February, Musharraf also said that another top militant commander, Mullah Dadullah, had been inside Pakistan three times but evaded capture. He didn't give details, but described it as a "a combined failure" of Pakistan and anti-terror allies who shared the intelligence.
In an interview with an Al-Jazeera TV journalist last week, Dadullah claimed he had deployed more than 6,000 fighters for a spring offensive. He said the fighters were hidden in tunnels and elsewhere in preparation the assault.
