Pakistani Taliban Leader Threatens Attack on Washington
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 31, 2009; 4:13 PM

KABUL, March 31 — The reclusive commander of the Pakistani Taliban claimed Tuesday that his fighters had carried out Monday’s bold assault on a police academy in eastern Pakistan and boasted that he was planning a terrorist attack in Washington that would astonish the world.

Beitullah Mehsud, an Islamist leader from the South Waziristan tribal area in northwest Pakistan, called several international news agencies in Pakistan to assert responsibility for the armed occupation of the police training compound that ended with 11 people dead.

He also told reporters that he was planning to attack targets in the U.S. capital in retaliation for more than 30 strikes by unmanned U.S. drones that have targeted suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries in northwest Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan.

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