PAKISTAN FIGHTING FOR SURVIVAL

Dozens of followers of Pakistan's top Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud were in a compound targeted by a USA missile strike that killed 27 near the Afghan border, intelligence officials said, on Saturday 02/14/2009, while insurgents freed a kidnapped Chinese engineer elsewhere in the northwest region.

The missile strike Saturday appeared to be the deadliest yet by the American UAV drone aircraft that prowl the FATA frontier region. It defied Pakistani warnings that the tactic is fueling extremism in the nuclear-armed Islamic nation.

The release of the Chinese man held by the Taliban since August was a rare bit of good news in Pakistan following the apparent beheading of a kidnapped Polish engineer, Piotr Stanczak, and threats to kill an abducted American UN official. The exact terms of his Saturday release were not immediately clear, but a Chinese official said he was doing well.

In an unrelated interview, President Asif Ali Zardari said the Taliban had expanded their presence to a "huge amount" of Pakistan and were even eyeing a takeover of the state.

"We're fighting for the survival of Pakistan. We're not fighting for the survival of anybody else," Zardari said, according to a transcript of his remarks that CBS television said it would air Sunday 02/15/2009 (see - Risk Of Collapse).

Many Pakistanis believe the country is fighting Islamist militants, who have enjoyed state support in the past, only at Washington's behest.

Remotely piloted U.S. aircraft are believed to have launched more than 30 attacks over the past year, and American officials say Al Qaeda's leadership and ability to support the insurgency in Afghanistan has been significantly weakened. But Pakistani officials say the vast majority of the victims are civilians (see - 5-Catastrophs).

After Saturday's strike, Taliban fighters surrounded the flattened compound in the village of Shrawangai Nazarkhel and carried away the dead and wounded in several vehicles. The village is in South Waziristan, part of the tribally governed area along the Afghan frontier considered the likely redoubt of Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden.

The victims included about 15 ethnic Uzbek militants from Uzbekistan and several Afghans, said Pakistani intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The seniority of the militants was unclear.

Pakistan's former government and the CIA have named Baitullah Mehsud as the prime suspect behind the December 2007 Bhutto assassination (see - Michael-Hayden). Pakistani officials accuse him of harboring foreign fighters, including Central Asians linked to Al Qaeda, and of training suicide bombers.

The new U.S. administration has brushed off Pakistani criticism that the missile strikes fuel extremist and anti-American sentiment and undercuts the government's own counterinsurgency strategy.

As overall security has deteriorated in Pakistan, foreigners have become prime targets. In recent months, Chinese, American, Iranian, Afghan and Polish citizens have been victims of abductions and killings.