UK building Pakistan border force camp?

Britain is building a training camp for Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps to help in the fight against the Taliban in the lawless border area with southern Afghanistan,The Times.

Britain is building a training camp for Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps to help in the fight against the Taliban in the lawless border area with southern Afghanistan,The Times reported on Friday.

The daily reported that Britain also planned to base 24 army trainers at the camp in the southwestern province of Baluchistan for a three-year stint from August next year,when construction is due to finish.

The British personnel would work alongside six US trainers at the camp,which is designed to house 550 people,the newspaper reported,quoting a senior official at the British High Commission in Islamabad.

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The camp will train 360 Frontier Corps soldiers at a time,on 12-week courses,the official said.

The report said the plan was politically sensitive because the British and US trainers will be the first foreign forces formally stationed in Baluchistan since Pakistan’s independence in 1947,although US special forces operated there during the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The British official emphasised to the Times that British and US personnel at the camp would conduct only “conventional military training” and would not operate alongside Pakistani forces outside its confines.