US may conduct raids against terrorists operating from Pak tribal areas

Washington, July 9 : US can go after the terrorists operating from Pakistan's tribal areas to check rising Taliban attacks against American troops in Afghanistan and to disrupt resurgent al-Qaida operatives' efforts to map strikes against the US homeland.

The plan of American commandos carrying out "hot pursuit" raids inside Pakistan was revealed by three US lawmakers in separate interviews with the Houston Chronicle.

The lawmakers -Gene Green, Michael McCaul, and Henry Cuellar - told that the plans for stepped-up US military operations are in response to Pakistan's failure to disrupt terrorist training camps and cross-border attacks from a region known as "the Federally Administered Tribal Areas," a remote, mountainous border area.

McCaul insisted that the Bush Administration should allow troops to carry out operation 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 added.

"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," he said.

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

Osama bin Laden, who has a 50 million dollars 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.

ANI