The army launched an offensive Oct. 17 aimed at rooting out Pakistani Taliban insurgents from the lawless ethnic Pashtun region along the Afghan border. Fighting has intensified in recent days since security forces zeroed in on three main insurgent bases — Sararogha, Makeen and Ladha — in their three-pronged offensive.

Soldiers have captured a “major part” of Sararogha and stormed into Ladha, the military said, where the intense street combat was taking place Wednesday.

South Waziristan’s rugged landscape of barren mountains and hidden ravines has become a global center of Islamist militancy, and many foreign al-Qaeda fighters are thought to be based there, along with thousands of Pakistani insurgents.

– Associated Press

BURMA

U.S. official meets generals, Suu Kyi

The highest-ranking U.S. diplomat to visit Burma in 14 years offered the possibility of improved relations Wednesday if its military regime moves toward democracy, putting into action the Obama administration’s new policy of engagement with the isolated country.

Assistant Secretary of State Kurt M. Campbell spoke after talks with the ruling generals and after a rare meeting with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been under house arrest for most of the past two decades.

Campbell greeted Suu Kyi with a handshake after she was driven to his lakeside hotel in Rangoon, where they met privately for two hours, U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Mei said.