Afstan: Getting the Quetta Shura Taliban in US sights/Update: Direct CF Quetta angle

Further to this post,

Time to make a decision about attacking Taliban in Baluchistan

the Americans are upping the pressure on the Paks (and it's important for the CF across from the Baluchistan border at Kandahar):

The Obama administration is turning up the pressure on Pakistan to fight the Taliban inside its borders, warning that if it does not act more aggressively the United States will use considerably more force on the Pakistani side of the border to shut down Taliban attacks on American forces in Afghanistan, American and Pakistani officials said.

The blunt message was delivered in a tense encounter in Pakistan last month, before President Obama announced his new war strategy, when Gen. James L. Jones, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, and John O. Brennan, the White House counterterrorism chief, met with the heads of Pakistan’s military and its intelligence service.

United States officials said the message did not amount to an ultimatum, but rather it was intended to prod a reluctant Pakistani military to go after Taliban insurgents in Pakistan who are directing attacks in Afghanistan.

For their part the Pakistanis interpreted the message as a fairly bald warning that unless Pakistan moved quickly to act against two Taliban groups they have so far refused to attack, the United States was prepared to take unilateral action to expand Predator drone attacks beyond the tribal areas and, if needed, to resume raids by Special Operations forces into the country against Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.

A senior administration official, asked about the encounter, declined to go into details but added quickly, “I think they read our intentions accurately.”

A Pakistani official who has been briefed on the meetings said, “Jones’s message was if that Pakistani help wasn’t forthcoming, the United States would have to do it themselves.”

American commanders said earlier this year that they were considering expanding drone strikes in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, but General Jones’s comments marked the first time that the United States bluntly told Pakistan it would have to choose between leading attacks against the insurgents inside the country’s borders or stepping aside to let the Americans do it...

Even before Mr. Obama announced his decision last week, the White House had approved an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. A missile strike from what was said to be a United States drone in the tribal areas killed at least three people early Tuesday, according to Pakistani intelligence officials, The Associated Press reported.

Pakistani officials, wary of civilian casualties and the appearance of further infringement of national sovereignty, are still in discussions with American officials over whether to allow the C.I.A. to expand its missile strikes into Baluchistan for the first time [emphasis added] — a politically delicate move because it is outside the tribal areas. American commanders say this is necessary because Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader who ran Afghanistan before the 2001 invasion, and other Taliban leaders are hiding in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province.

Pakistani officials also voice concern that if the Pakistani Army were to aggressively attack the two groups that most concern the United States — the Afghan Taliban leaders and the Haqqani network based in North Waziristan — the militants would respond with waves of retaliatory bombings, further undermining the weak civilian government...

Update: The CF's direct Quetta angle.