Kerry to Visit School Attacked by Taliban

Washington is to unveil Tuesday some $250 million in aid to back Pakistan's fight against militants and develop its unruly tribal areas as top diplomat John Kerry reportedly plans a visit to a Taliban-hit school in Peshawar.

Last month's attack on the school, which killed 150 people mostly schoolboys, has "unified the country in a way that they repeatedly describe as Pakistan's 9/11," a senior State Department official told reporters traveling with Kerry.

"This event, given it's horrific nature, had truly united the country... in trying to put together a national action plan, trying to figure out how they would deal with terrorism."

The December 16 raid on the Army Public School prompted a bout of national soul-searching even in a country accustomed to high levels of violence.

Last week's Islamist attacks in Paris have further sharpened the global focus on militant extremism.

Washington has pressed Islamabad for years to wipe out the militant sanctuaries in lawless tribal areas such as North Waziristan, which have been used to launch attacks on NATO forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

Many believe Pakistan's security services see the Haqqanis as an "asset" and maintain close links with them.

But U.S. officials said that in annual strategic talks which opened Monday, the Pakistanis were no longer making an argument against "good and bad terrorists".

"Not making any distinction between terrorist groups is one that we have heard more uniformly and more robustly than we've ever heard," the official said, adding that "the proof would be in the pudding".

Schools across Pakistan, including the one in Peshawar, reopened on Monday after an extended break following the December massacre, as students and parents expressed defiance and apprehension at returning.

Kerry, who also met late Monday with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was said to be planning to visit the school, although the State Department steadfastly refused to confirm the news. 

"We heard you are planning to visit Peshawar and the school," Sartaj Aziz, Sharif's national security adviser told Kerry shortly after he arrived.

"It is a very good gesture," he added.

If Kerry does visit Peshawar, it would be the first by a high-ranking American official since Speaker John Boehner went in 2011.

On Tuesday the U.S. will also officially announce that some $250 million of already appropriated funds to combat militancy will be "earmarked for North Waziristan, marked for reconstruction, including for" some 700,000 people displaced by Pakistani airstrikes.

The money would go towards food, shelter, health as well as the livestock which the locals depend on.

There have been a series of Pakistani airstrikes in the restive northwest, a hiding place for different regional militant groups, in the wake of the Peshawar attack.

While there has been good cooperation in the fight against al-Qaida militants, the U.S. wants to ensure that actions are met with a real and sustained effort to constrain the ability of other groups such as the Haqqani Network, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) -- who were responsible the school attack -- and the Afghan Taliban.

Several Pakistani officials had said "several times today they won't differentiate between good and bad Taliban," another State Department official said.

The statement was a revelation as it acknowledged there that there had been such a policy in the past and the Pakistanis "had committed themselves to something that we can more easily observe and measure."

A weekend online video meanwhile purportedly showed dozens of former militants of the Pakistani Taliban pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group, which has seized a swathe of territory in Iraq and Syria.

The video raised the specter of the IS group tapping support within Pakistan and Afghanistan, which both are plagued by dozens of militant groups.

And one of the State Department officials admitted the United States and Pakistan remained very concerned about such a prospect.

Kerry also wanted to discuss ways to improve Afghan-Pakistani ties as well as reconciliation efforts with Taliban militants in each country.

Kerry arrived after a short visit to India, where he attended an investment conference in the western state of Gujarat alongside new Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.