Zardari: Pakistan won't fall to Taliban

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari has ruled out that his nuclear-armed county will collapse in face of the Taliban insurgency. "No. We are 180 million people. There the population is much, much more than the insurgents are," Zardari said on Sunday in response to an NBC question asking whether Pakistan was to collapse in face of the Taliban militants. In early May, Gen. David Petraeus, commander of US Central Command, had warned that Pakistan's government risks collapsing if the Taliban were not defeated within the next two weeks. Anxiety was heightened as it was reported that the Taliban were planning to infiltrate into Islamabad and other major cities across nuclear-armed Pakistan. After many such speculations about Taliban advancements, government security forces have launched operations to flush out the militants from the troubled northwestern Swat valley and its adjoining strategic districts near Islamabad. Nearly 200 Taliban militants have been killed in fresh army offensives against militants in the volatile insurgency-plagued Valley over the past day, military sources revealed on Sunday. Zardari has vowed that the army will continue offensives against the Taliban in Swat until security is restored to the volatile valley. Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani has also emphasized the strength of his government saying that state institutions were functioning 'effectively' despite Taliban insurgency. Al-Qaeda and Taliban linked militants have killed thousands of people in hundreds of suicide bombings across the violent-wracked county since former military ruler Pervez Musharraf joined the US-led war on terror in 2001.