US directly interrogating Mullah Baradar

WASHINGTON: US interrogators, allowed direct access by Pakistan to question Mullah Baradar, the Afghan Taliban's No 2, have starting to produce useful intelligence on the group and its operations against US forces across the Pakistani border, American officials said on Tuesday. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was captured in Karachi in late January in a joint operation by the CIA and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Direct US access to Baradar, who is in Pakistani custody, was minimal at first, but US officials said the ISI has eased restrictions and American investigators have been participating regularly and directly in interrogation sessions for at least the past month.

Some of the information given by Baradar, the Afghan Taliban's long time military commander, has been verified and has been useful to US commanders' intelligence officers and analysts in both Afghanistan and Washington, three US officials involved in the matter said. They said Pakistan was taking the lead.

"These things take time," one US military official said of interrogating Baradar. "It takes time to get the information and it takes time to check out that information."

Baradar's arrest was hailed by the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, as a potential game-changing development after eight years of war, although some US officials had initially played down the value of the information he gave Pakistani interrogators. reuters