US not sincere about Afghan peace: Haqqanis

The United States was not sincere about peace in Afghanistan when it signalled it would remain open to exploring a settlement that includes the Haqqani network, one of the group's senior commanders said on Thursday.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested in comments this week that Washington would not shut the door to the Haqqanis -- blamed for high-profile attacks in Afghanistan -- in any peace arrangement.

The Haqqanis saw the remarks as an attempt to divide Afghan insurgent groups and believed only the top leaders of the Taliban should negotiate, said the commander.

"We had rejected many such offers from the United States in the past and reject this new offer as we are not authorised to decide the future of Afghanistan," he told Reuters.

In an interview with Reuters, Clinton did not spell out who the United States believes should speak for Afghanistan's insurgent groups and said it was too soon to tell whether any of them were serious about reconciliation.

Inclusion of the Haqqani network in a hoped-for peace deal -- now a chief objective in the Obama administration's Afghanistan policy after a decade of war -- is a controversial idea in Washington.

Officials blame the group for last month's attack on the US embassy in Kabul and a truck bombing that injured scores of American soldiers.

The CIA has been using remotely piloted drone aircraft to hunt down leaders of the Haqqani network in northwest Pakistan, where it says the group enjoys sanctuaries.

A suspected US drone strike killed a close aide of the commander of the Haqqanis in Pakistan's North Waziristan region on the Afghan border on Thursday, intelligence officials said.

The strike came as US special representative Marc Grossman arrived in Islamabad to meet top officials and mend ties strained by recent US allegations that Pakistan is supporting the Haqqanis.

Jalil Haqqani, 33, who helped organize the Haqqanis' operations, was one of four militants killed when two missiles allegedly fired by a US drone struck a house in a village, the officials said.

The senior Haqqani commander denied the report and said Jalil had no link to the group.

The Haqqanis, led by Sirajuddin Haqqani, have emerged as a major source of tension in US-Pakistani ties, with former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen calling them a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

"Jalil was a highly trusted companion of Sirajuddin. He had been with the Haqqani group for a long time and was tasked with handling communications," one intelligence official said.

The official added that Jalil was Sirajuddin's cousin.

In a second attack, a suspected US drone fired three missiles at a group of militants in the South Waziristan border region, killing six, according to intelligence officials.

Pakistani officials have angrily denied US allegations that the country is helping militant groups such as the Haqqani network strike at Nato and Afghan targets in Afghanistan, including the Sept. 13 attack on the American embassy in Kabul.

Sirajuddin said recently his group felt secure enough to operate freely in Afghanistan and had no need of safe havens in Pakistan.

Sirajuddin told Reuters in September that his group would take part in peace talks, but only if the Afghan Taliban did so as well, a position reiterated by the senior commander.

"The Haqqani network is not a separate movement. It's part of the Taliban and it cannot hold any separate talks. We are Taliban and Mullah Mohammad Omar is our leader," he said.

The United States has been pressing Pakistan to take on the Haqqanis in order to help Washington stabilise Afghanistan as much as possible by the end of 2014, when all Nato troops are due home from Afghanistan.

Grossman's visit comes at a time of some of the worst tensions in US-Pakistani ties, already badly strained after a May 2 commando raid killed Osama bin Laden, who had apparently been living in a garrison town near Islamabad for years.

Grossman held meetings with Pakistan's president, prime minister, the powerful army chief and the foreign minister.

"We talked about how we can continue, in a systematic way, to identify the interests that we share with Pakistan, and there are many, and find ways to act on them jointly," he said at a media appearance with the foreign minister.

US missiles kill Haqqani 'coordinator' in Pakistan

American drone-fired missiles killed a ranking member of the militant Haqqani network on Thursday in northwestern Pakistan, striking a group that Washington claims is the No. 1 threat in Afghanistan and is supported by Pakistani security forces, local intelligence officials said.

The strike came as US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman arrived in Pakistan to improve ties between Washington and Islamabad that have been severely strained by stepped-up American claims of Pakistan assistance to the Haqqanis.

Two other militants were killed in the attack close in the Haqqani stronghold of North Waziristan, the group's main sanctuary along the Afghan border, said the Pakistani officials in the region. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

They identified the Haqqani member as Jalil and said he was a "coordinator" for the group. The men were walking down a street when the two missiles hit, the officials said. One said Jalil was related to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of the network.

The missiles hit close to Dande Darpa Khel village, which is home to a large seminary with links to the Haqqanis.

Later Thursday, another pair of drone-fired missiles hit a militant position on hills close to the frontier in South Waziristan, killing six people, intelligence officials said. They said the militants were firing rockets and mortars across the border at an American base in Machadad Kot.

US officials do not talk about the CIA-led drone program. Nato and US officers in Afghanistan were not immediately available for comment.

The al-Qaida-allied Haqqani network is one of most organized insurgent factions fighting the US presence in Afghanistan, and it has been blamed for high-profile assaults against Western and Afghan targets in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Washington has long urged Islamabad to attack the fighters, who live undisturbed in North Waziristan despite the region being home to several thousand Pakistani troops. At the same time, the US is pursuing the possibility of peace talks with the Haqqanis and other Taliban factions, reflecting the fact that the insurgency can't be defeated militarily.

In brief remarks to reporters, Grossman, whose mission is to promote the peace process, talked about his confidence that the US and Pakistan can "can make a commitment to future work" together, suggesting work still needs to be done to restore the relationship.

Last month, senior American officials accused Pakistan's spy agency of assisting the Haqqani network in attacks on Western targets in Afghanistan, including a strike last month on the US Embassy in Kabul. Pakistani officials have denied the charges.

They were the most serious allegations yet of Pakistani duplicity in the 10-year war in Afghanistan and sent already strained ties between Islamabad and Washington plunging further. Obama administration officials have since backtracked somewhat on the claims.

Most independent analysts say Pakistan is either tolerating or supporting the Haqqani network to some degree because it foresees chaos in Afghanistan once America withdraws, and wants to cultivate the group as an ally there against the influence of India, its regional enemy.

Since 2008, the United States has regularly unleashed unmanned drone-fired missiles against militants in the border region, which is home to Pakistani militants, Afghan factions like the Haqqanis and al-Qaida operatives from around the world, especially the Middle East.

This year, there have been around 50 drone strikes, most of them in North Waziristan. Pakistani officials protest the strikes, which are unpopular among many Pakistanis, but the country is believed to support them privately and makes no diplomatic or military efforts to stop them.

US leverage against Pakistan to get it to fight the Haqqani group is limited because it relies on the country to truck much of its war supplies into Afghanistan. The supplies of non-lethal material arrive in Pakistan's port of Karachi by sea before traveling into Afghanistan by land.

The convoys are occasionally attacked by insurgents, especially close to the border, where the militants are strongest.

On Thursday, gunmen opened fire and set ablaze five tankers carrying oil for NATO and US troops in Sindh province, some 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) from the border, said police officer Khair Mohammad Samejho. The tankers were parked outside a restaurant in Shikarpur district when they were attacked, he said.

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