No U.S. drones over Pakistan's Baluchistan: Zardari

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The United States will not extend attacks on militants by pilotless drone aircraft to Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan, President Asif Ali Zardari said in an interview broadcast on Thursday.

The United States and Pakistan do not see eye to eye on strategy to fight al Qaeda and Taliban militants, Pakistan said this week during a visit by senior U.S. officials, with the drone strikes a major point of dispute.

The New York Times reported last month that the United States might expand the area of its strikes from northwestern Pakistan to Baluchistan province, which borders violent southern Afghanistan.

But Zardari, speaking after this week's visit by U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that would not happen.

"In Baluchistan, they have assured us they will not be using drones," Zardari said in an interview with Dunya television.

Pakistan is crucial to U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, where a Taliban insurgency has intensified. Surging militant violence in nuclear-armed Pakistan has also raised fears about its prospects.

The United States has since last year stepped up strikes on militants in strongholds on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border by pilotless drones, mostly in the Waziristan region.

Pakistan objects to the strikes, saying they violate its sovereignty and the civilian casualties they cause enrage villagers and whip up support for the militants.

DIFFERENCES

But the United States has brushed off Pakistani complaints. U.S. commanders say eliminating militant enclaves in northwest Pakistan is vital to success in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has also been angered by recent U.S. accusations that elements in its military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency had contact with, or even provided support to, militants.

Pakistan for years used Islamists to further objectives in Afghanistan and the Kashmir region, which both Pakistan and India claim, but it denies accusations it has maintained support.

A military spokesman denied reports that ISI chief Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shujaa Pasha had snubbed Holbrooke and Mullen by refusing to meet them. But Pasha had been "candid" in criticizing U.S. doubts about Pakistani sincerity, reports said.

Differences with the United States, including over the drones, would be taken up again in three-way talks between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States in Washington on May 6-7, Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit told a briefing.

Zardari did not refer to the anger over the accusations against the ISI but said the United States had accepted several Pakistani points and it could change its mind on the drones.

"There is possibility that we ... prevail," he said. "They have accepted several of our positions and there are differences in some areas."

(Reporting by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Robert Birsel and Dean Yates)