Gathering info from Pak-Afghan border difficult: Boucher

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February 01, 2008 08:57 IST

A senior Bush administration official has said that despite steps being taken to get information about the situation at the Pakistan-Afghanistan borders, there are a lot of things about which the US is finding difficult to get information.

US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher said this testifying on Afghanistan before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he was asked to comment on the statement made by a senior counter-terrorism outfit official General Dell Dailey on the goings on in the Afghan-Pakistan border.

When Wisconsin Democrat Russel Feingold, quoting General Dailey, asked Boucher, "We don't have enough information about what's going on there, not on Al Qaeda, not on foreign fighters, not on the Taliban."

There are a lot of things that go on up there that are difficult to find out. On the other hand, we do have a pretty good idea what's going on up there, whose up there and what they're doing, Boucher said.

"I think there are a lot of things we can do to improve the capabilities, to monitor the border. We're working with the Pakistanis and Afghans to do that. We'll have a border coordination centre that opens in March 2008. There's better military coordination going on now, and there's a lot of things we're doing to support the Pakistanis as they start to go after these areas with more force," Boucher said.

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