SHAKTOI, Pakistan (AP) - A top Pakistani Taliban commander says he has sent thousands of fighters to neighboring Afghanistan to rebuff incoming U.S. troops, a claim that comes as a Pakistani army offensive is believed to have pushed many of his men to flee their main redoubt.

Waliur Rehman told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Monday night that the Pakistani Taliban remain committed to battling the army in South Waziristan tribal region, but that they are essentially waging a guerrilla war.

Rehman is a deputy to Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, and the man in charge of the group’s operations in South Waziristan.

"Since (President Barack) Obama is also sending additional forces to Afghanistan, we sent thousands of our men there to fight NATO and American forces," Rehman said. The Afghan "Taliban needed our help at this stage, and we are helping them."

Col. Wayne Shanks, a U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, called Rehman’s comments "rhetoric" that were not to be believed.

"We have not noticed any significant movement of insurgents in the border area," he said.

Either stance is nearly impossible to independently verify. Access to the tribal belt, especially conflict zones, is severely restricted. Pakistani army spokesmen could not immediately be reached for comment.

Rehman spoke in a large mud-brick compound in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan.

He looked relaxed as a he sat on a carpet surrounded by seven rifle-toting guards and Azam Tariq, a Taliban spokesman. It was apparently the first time either he or Hakimullah Mehsud had given an in-person interview to a journalist since the Pakistani military launched the ground offensive on Oct. 17.

To meet Rehman, the AP reporter traveled to North Waziristan’s town of Mir Ali and from there was taken by Taliban militants on a six-hour ride to South Waziristan in a vehicle with tinted windows.

The army sent some 30,000 troops to battle as many as 10,000 militants in South Waziristan, including hundreds of Uzbek fighters. The military estimates it has killed around 600 Taliban fighters. Rehman claimed he’d lost fewer than 20 fighters.

But many of the Pakistani Taliban militants are believed to have fled to other parts of the tribal belt, a semiautonomous stretch of rugged territory that runs along the Afghan border. Most were believed to have gone to North Waziristan, Orakzai and Kurram tribal areas.