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'Mush approved US attacks on Al-Qaida targets'
24 Mar 2008, 1200 hrs IST, PTI
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NEW
YORK: The Musharraf regime gave "tacit" approval to the US attacks by pilot-less
planes on Al- Qaida targets along Pakistan's restive border area
(Watch: Mush
approves US strikes on Pak soil?)
and the
strikes have been stepped up as officials here fear that the new civilian
government will be hostile to such an offensive.
Since January, missiles
reportedly fired from CIA operated Predator drones have hit at least three
suspected hideouts of Islamic militants, including a strike on March 16 in Toog
village in South Waziristan that left 20 dead.
The
Newsweek
quoting US officials and Pakistani sources
said the recent wave of Predator attacks are at least partly the result of
understandings the US officials reached with Musharraf and other top Pakistanis,
giving Washington virtually unrestricted authority to hit targets in the border
areas.
The surge, says the
magazine in its upcoming issue, began after visits to Pakistan at the beginning
of the year by senior US officials, including intelligence czar Mike McConnell,
CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden and Adm. William Fallon, who recently resigned
as commander of the US forces in the region.
Some news reports had said at
the time that President Pervez Musharraf had "rebuffed" US proposals to step up
combat operations inside Pakistan.
Bruce Riedel, a retired CIA
expert on the region, said that a new wave of terrorism inside Pakistan there
were 62 suicide attacks last year, after just six in 2006 has forced Musharraf
and the new military chief Ashfaq Kayani to acknowledge that the extremists
threatening Americans now also pose a growing threat to Pakistan's internal
security.
Another reason for
the rise in Predator strikes, a US official said is that Washington fears that
any newly formed civilian government in Pakistan will be more hostile to US
operations there than Musharraf's current regime.
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