Pakistan has 'broken back' of militants: army chief

Pakistan's army chief said Saturday his forces had "broken the back" of Islamist militants after the United States criticised the country's efforts to quell Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked rebels.

"The terrorists' backbone has been broken and God willing we will soon prevail," General Ashfaq Kayani said in a speech at a passing-out parade at the Pakistan Military Academy in northwestern garrison town of Abbottabad.

The White House this month criticised Pakistan's efforts to defeat the Taliban in its border regions, in a report immediately rejected by Islamabad.

The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, subsequently accused Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of having ties with the Afghan Taliban in the northwestern tribal belt.

"Let me assure you that we in Pakistan's army are fully aware of the internal and external threat to our country," Kayani said on Saturday.

"In the war against terrorism our officers and soldiers have made great sacrifices and have achieved tremendous success.

"The people of Pakistan value their freedom and independence more than anything else, and consider no sacrifice too great to preserve it," he said.

A military statement released Thursday, after Mullen's comments, said Kayani had "strongly rejected negative propaganda on Pakistan not doing enough and (the) Pakistan army's lack of clarity on the way forward".

In an interview with private TV channel Geo, Mullen, the highest-ranking officer in the US armed forces, had said: "ISI has a long standing relationship with the Haqqani network -- that does not mean everybody in ISI but it is there."

The Haqqani network is an Al-Qaeda-allied organisation run by Afghan warlord Sirajuddin Haqqani and based in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal district.

The group has been blamed for some of the deadliest anti-US attacks in Afghanistan, including a suicide attack at a US base in Khost in 2009 that killed seven CIA operatives.