‘US poised to raid militant hideouts in Pakistan’

American commandos are poised to stage “hot pursuit” raids into Fata to stem mounting Taliban attacks against US troops in Afghanistan and to disrupt resurgent al-Qaeda operatives’ efforts to map strikes against the US homeland, according to three Texas Congressmen briefed during a trip to the region.

The lawmakers — Reps. Gene Green, D-Houston, Michael McCaul, R-Austin, and Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo — told the Houston Chronicle in separate interviews that the plans for stepped-up US military operations were in response to Pakistan’s failure to disrupt terrorist training camps and cross-border attacks from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

The Bush administration is recalibrating US operations in the region because of a 40 per cent increase in violent attacks against US-led forces in Afghanistan that have pushed US casualties for the month of June beyond the monthly toll in Iraq, the lawmakers said.

Osama bin Laden, who has a $50 million bounty on his head, is widely believed to be hiding among the 3.3 million people in the rural region. The United States has about 34,000 troops in Afghanistan, a number expected to rise to nearly 40,000 with reinforcements next year.

The Texas Congressmen said they devoted much of their delegation’s separate meetings with President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani last Friday to urging additional action against militants in the tribal territories.

But they said Pakistani officials rejected resumption of the joint US-Pakistani operations that ended in 2003, calling instead for additional US military assistance and intelligence cooperation to target seven or eight terrorist leaders operating in the tribal areas.

Pakistan’s ineffective campaign makes it “imperative that US forces be allowed to pursue the Taliban and al-Qaeda in tribal areas inside Pakistan,” McCaul insisted. “If we don’t do something now, they’re going to strike us again (in the United States) and it is going to be out of this area.”

Cuellar said that “either Pakistan does more or we will be taking things into our own hands,” adding: “If our troops are fired on, there will be hot pursuit into that territory.” The lawmakers’ comments suggested that the Bush administration might have resolved the bureaucratic turf battles that the New York Times recently reported had delayed implementation of a secret administration plan to authorise US Special Forces to deploy teams into Pakistan’s tribal areas to track, capture or kill terrorist leaders.

Army Lt Col Mark Wright, serving as a spokesman for the Defence Department, said US forces “remain ready, willing and able to assist the Pakistanis and to partner with them to provide additional training and to conduct joint operations should they desire.”

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment. US military commanders in Afghanistan already have exercised hot pursuit on a limited basis to chase Taliban fighters and al-Qaeda militants into adjacent Pakistani areas.