Pakistan reacts to U.S. Afghan strategy

FRANKFURT, Germany, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- Pakistan wants the United States to better coordinate with its armies in implementing its new Afghan strategy, Pakistan's foreign minister said.

While acknowledging the United States informed his government prior to President Barack Obama's announcement of a troop surge, Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Pakistan remains concerned about the impact of the strategy, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan said.

"Our issue is not how you deploy them (U.S. troops in Afghanistan) and how you use them. We are only concerned about the negative implications," Qureshi said in Frankfurt, Germany, where he was traveling with Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani.

"The more you coordinate with military authorities of Pakistan the better it will be."

In announcing his Afghan strategy Tuesday, Obama noted the "cancer" of extremism had also taken root in the border region of Pakistan.

Obama said his administration is committed to a partnership with Pakistan.

"We will strengthen Pakistan's capacity to target those groups that threaten our countries, and have made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe-haven for terrorists whose location is known, and whose intentions are clear," Obama said.

Pakistan has been expressing concern that additional U.S. troops deployed in the southern regions of Afghanistan such as the Taliban-infested Helmand province would encourage the militants to seek refuge in Pakistan tribal areas across the border and further unsettle conditions in its Balochistan province.