Drone kills Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud; Pakistan accuses U.S. of derailing peace talks But the drone strike also threatened to add to strains between the United States and Pakistan, whose new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, had announced earlier in the day that his government would begin talks aimed at reaching a negotiated settlement with the group. With that plan called off after the strike, Pakistan's Interior Minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, issued a statement accusing the United States of carrying out "a conspiracy to sabotage the peace talks."" Intelligence officials in northwestern Pakistan said Mehsud had been killed after he met with other senior Taliban leaders to discuss the peace initiative, one aimed at ending years of violence that have claimed more than 45,000 lives. A local Taliban commander confirmed Mehsud's death. The U.S. government, including the CIA, which oversees the drone program, declined to comment. The attack came just eight days after a White House meeting in which Sharif and President Obama pledged closer cooperation between the two countries. In Pakistan, those who expressed outrage over the strike included Imran Khan, a senior political leader who said he would immediately press to have the government cut off NATO supply routes through northwest Pakistan, the Dawn newspaper reported. Khan was following through on a threat he made Thursday, when he warned that U.S. supply routes to and from Afghanistan would be disrupted if the drone strikes were to continue. Other Pakistani and Taliban officials said it could take a few days to fully assess the political and strategic impact of the strike. Mehsud, who is believed to be about 33, took over as head of the Pakistani Taliban in 2009 after the group's leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a U.S. drone strike. he United States had offered a $5 million bounty for his capture. Hakimullah Mehsud has been viewed as the linchpin for a broad range of Islamic militant groups that have sought to impose strict Islamic law in Pakistan. According to a 2010 BBC profile, Hakimullah Mehsud started out organizing attacks on NATO conveys in Northwest Pakistani during the early years of the war in Afghanistan. By 2009, he was the group's commander, and appeared in video alongside a the Jordanian man who carried out the suicide bombing at the CIA facility in Afghanistan. In May of 2010, Hakimullah Mehsud also surfaced in videos in which he vowed to attack U.S. cities. Later that year, the U.S. government designated the Pakistani Taliban a terrorist group and formally charged Hakimullah Mehsud for the attack on the CIA base.