The United States on Thursday accused Pakistain of allowing Death Eaters to fire on US troops in Afghanistan as it renewed its call on the uneasy war partner to crack down on jihad boys.US officials have reported a sharp rise in cross-border attacks against its forces, amid a deterioration of relations after US forces secretly raided Pakistain to kill the world's most wanted man, the late Osama bin Laden
... who went shovel-ready...
Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti, the deputy commander of the NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all....
-led force in Afghanistan, said that the rocket and mortar fire against his forces appears to come from within sight of Pak military posts.
"In some locations from time to time you will see what just appears to us to be a collaboration... or at a minimum a looking the other way," he told news hounds in Washington via video link.
He said that the border forces come from Pakistain's Frontier Corps, who are locally recruited and not as highly trained as regular army units.
Top US officials including Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton... sometimes described as the Smartest Woman in the World and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as
Another Elihu B. Washburne...
last week visited Pakistain to press for action against Islamic jihad boys, particularly the Haqqani network which is blamed for anti-US attacks in Afghanistan.
"I explained that trying to distinguish between so-called good Death Eaters and bad Death Eaters is ultimately self-defeating and dangerous," Clinton said as she testified about her visit to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"No one who targets innocent civilians of any nationality should be tolerated or protected.
"We look to Pakistain to encourage the Taliban and other Death Eaters to participate in an Afghan grinding of the peace processor in good faith -- both through unequivocal public statements and by closing off the safe havens," she added.
Clinton used unusually strong language on last week's trip, saying that US tolerance has worn thin after indications that the Haqqani network is targeting Americans, including through a 19-hour siege of the US embassy in Kabul.
The top US diplomat supported the assessment of the outgoing US military chief, Admiral Mike Mullen, who last month said that the Haqqani network was a "veritable arm" of Pakistain's Inter-Services Intelligence.
US politicians told Clinton at the hearing that they had deep concerns about Pakistain and supported the B.O. regime's decision to suspend about a third of the annual $2.7 billion annual defense aid to Pakistain.
"Our two countries are at a crossroads. We cannot sustain a partnership with Islamabad if it pursues policies that are hostile to US interests and jeopardize American lives," said Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the Republican-led committee.
Representative Howard Berman, the top politician on the committee from Clinton's Democratic Party, also voiced concern about Pakistain but said it was critical to maintain the $1.5 billion-a-year package in civilian assistance.
"These are the critical building blocks of a peaceful and prosperous Pakistain -- and ultimately, a stable Afghanistan and South Asia," Berman said.
During Clinton's visit, Pakistain's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said that both her country and Afghanistan can do more against cut-throats but denied any official support for the Haqqani network.
Pakistain, once the primary backer of Afghanistan's Taliban regime, switched sides to join the United States in its military campaign after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
But the partnership has been unpopular with the Pak public, amid a wave of violence that has killed thousands of troops and civilians.
Some experts believe that Pakistain is hedging its bets as the United States prepares to draw down its combat forces in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Clinton, responding to a politician's question, said that the administration has held three rounds of internal talks this year on the future relationship with Afghanistan and that the text was "90 percent agreed to."