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U.S. forces pursue Taliban into Pakistan
WASHINGTON - American forces on Afghanistan's eastern border routinely fire upon and pursue Taliban enemies into Pakistan, defense officials told Congress on Thursday, offering the most detailed description to date of U.S. action in that region.They said the Taliban threat is greater now than it was a year ago, and they agreed that the Pakistan government can and must do more to get at the large, ungoverned sectors along the remote Pakistan border that are safe havens for Taliban insurgents. I'm not at all sure they can. Perhaps the best we can hope for is they won't do more than talk 'sternly' at us when we act in those regions. "We have all the authorities we need to pursue, either with (artillery) fire or on the ground, across the border," said Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Lute, who is chief operations officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said soldiers can respond if there is an imminent threat. But he said they would have to seek the Pakistan government's permission to go after a munitions factory further inside the Pakistani border. The discussion came just days after Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in an effort to urge a more aggressive Pakistani effort to hunt al-Qaida and Taliban fighters who are expected to increase attacks into Afghanistan this spring. Lute, meanwhile, provided a detailed description of when U.S. forces can fire on and pursue insurgents across the border into Pakistan. He said they can respond when faced with a hostile act, or anyone "demonstrating hostile intent." The final decision is made by the commander at the scene. He would not say, however, if there are restrictions on how far into the country soldiers can go. He said the decision is based not on distance, but on the immediacy of the threat involved. But is the policy more or less restrictive than at the Mexican border? "If just across the border, inside Pakistan, we have surveillance systems that detect a Taliban party setting up a rocket system which is obviously pointed west, into Afghanistan, we do not have to wait for the rockets to be fired. They have demonstrated hostile intent and we can engage them," Lute said. He added that if U.S. forces learned of a munitions factory inside Pakistan, they would have to share that intelligence with the government, and would have to get permission to strike the building. Which would only be granted once the building was emptied, if ever. Asked if Pakistan had ever turned down such a request, Lute said he would have to answer that in a closed, classified setting. "Yes." (But we can't say that in public or it might make our Pakistani allies look bad.) Posted by: Glenmore 2007-03-02 |
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