U.S. Mulls Adding Pakistan Taliban to Terror List

The United States said Tuesday it was mulling whether to blacklist Pakistan's Taliban as a foreign terrorist organization after it was implicated in the failed Times Square bombing.

The State Department designation would freeze any U.S. assets of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, ban Americans from funding or assisting the group and bar its members from entering the United States.

"We are considering the question of designating the Pakistani Taliban," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters.

"There is an intentionally deliberate process that we go through. And any group that is to be designated must meet very specific legal criteria," he said.

"It has come into sharp relief in light of the (failed) Times Square bombing and this is something that we are actively considering," Crowley said.

He added that the investigation of the plot might shed light on whether to blacklist the Taliban.
A group of U.S. senators, meanwhile, called for Pakistan's Taliban to be blacklisted.

"This group poses an existential threat to the safety of not only our soldiers fighting abroad but also Americans here at home," Senator Chuck Schumer, (D-NY), told a news conference.

Schumer, joined by four fellow Democratic senators, wrote a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her to blacklist Tehreek-e-Taliban.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan's chief Hakimullah Mehsud, whom U.S. officials earlier believed was killed in a missile strike, recently resurfaced in two videos and threatened attacks on major U.S. cities.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said there is evidence that the Pakistani Taliban was behind the May 1 plot, in which Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad allegedly left a car packed with explosives in New York's bustling Times Square.

The United States blacklists a range of prominent foreign movements as terrorist groups, including Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was accused of masterminding the bloody 2008 siege of Mumbai.