WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said in an interview broadcast Friday that he was "extremely concerned" about the Taliban's recent moves closer to Pakistan's capital of Islamabad.
"We're certainly moving closer to the tipping point" where Pakistan could be overtaken by Islamic extremists, Adm. Mike Mullen said in the interview, broadcast even as reports from Pakistan suggested a pullback was under way. Mullen was interviewed earlier Friday in Afghanistan.
Later, a local official in Pakistan said Taliban militants had begun withdrawing from a recently seized district in the northwestern part of the country after the government warned it would remove them by force. The withdrawal, if carried through, would eliminate the most immediate threat to a peace agreement in the militant-held Swat Valley.
Mullen said he hoped the arrival soon of an additional 17,000 American combat troops in Afghanistan will stabilize things there and in neighboring Pakistan.
"We're going as fast as we can go right now and we want to get it right," he said on NBC's "Today" show. But Mullen also said the Afghan people "have to take over security for their nation. That's the only way we're going to be successful."
Mullen said he shared the sentiments of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who told a House committee earlier this week she believes the Pakistani government is "basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists."
Clinton said Thursday that the administration's special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, has had "painful, specific" conversations with a wide range of Pakistanis about the need to act more effectively against the insurgents.
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