The Pakistan government has criticized the United States for the drone-strike death of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, saying his killing jeopardizes peace talks with the militant group.

Pakistan’s interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, said the CIA-drone strike that killed militant leader Hakimullah Mehsud Friday night has sabotaged government attempts to negotiate a peaceful end to the decade-long Taliban insurgency.

Speaking to official media, Minister Khan said a three-person government delegation had been on its way to talk to the Taliban commander when the drone missiles smashed into the house where Mehsud was staying.

Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid said Saturday he hoped Mehsud’s death would not halt the peace efforts.

Author and analyst Ahmed Rashid said U.S. missile strike follows a pattern by the U.S. authorities.

“In a way the Americans have had this habit of stopping any kind of dialogue between the either the Pakistani army or the Pakistani government, with the Pakistani Taliban by using drones to knock out some important figure. And that is exactly what they have done this time,” he said.

The U.S. had a $5 million bounty on Mehsud. He is accused of involvement in a deadly suicide attack on a CIA compound in Afghanistan in 2009, and a failed bombing in New York’s Times Square in 2010.

The 34-year-old leader had taken over the militant group in 2009 when its previous head was killed, also by a drone strike.

There were mixed reactions in Pakistan to the news of Mehsud’s death. Some welcomed the killing of the militant commander, seen as responsible for the death of thousands of civilians and security forces in Pakistan. But others said Washington had destroyed the chance for peace talks.

Analyst Raza Rumi, a senior fellow at the Jinnah Institute, dismissed that argument. He says that acting against Mehsud would have robbed political leaders of badly needed right-wing Islamist political support, so they had preferred to publicly pursue the idea of negotiations, even though there was little substance to the policy.

Rumi suggested the drone strike had Pakistan’s tacit support.

“Obviously such precise intelligence and information must have come from local sources, and there are views in Pakistani media as well which are saying that you know there must be some level of cooperation going on in getting these targets eliminated,” said Rumi.

Some Taliban commanders said Saturday they had named Khan Said Sajna to take Mehsud’s place. Sajna, said to come from the same tribe and area as the killed commander, is believed to have support within the Pakistani Taliban, but not the backing of their allies in the Afghan Taliban.

But Pakistani media quoted a Taliban spokesman Maulana Tariq Azam as saying that a new leader has not yet been chosen. He said a gathering of Taliban leaders would decide within the next few days.

Although separate organizations, factions within the two Taliban groups often support each other. The uncertainty over Sajna’s appointment reflects the further fragmentation of what is already a divided Pakistani Taliban, making any kind of effective negotiated settlement even harder to achieve.

Analyst Rumi says if confirmed, Sajna will likely follow Mehsud’s lead.

“This new guy he’s of the same ideological bent so I don’t see that his policies and tactics would change any, would be any different, I mean some say he’s more given to a peace settlement, but I mean that remains to be seen,” said Rumi.

Many fear that fighters belonging to the Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella organization for a number of militant groups sharing an extremist Islamist ideology, will take revenge for Mehsud’s death. [Read More]

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Source: VOA News: War and Conflict