'Report on nod for air strikes in Pak tribal areas idle'
Rawalpindi, Mar 25: Pakistan President's Secretariat has refuted the report published in a US magazine, Newsweek, saying that Pervez Musharraf had given his nod to the American forces to carry out air strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas.
The
report
said
that
such
strikes
had
been
stepped
up,
as
(Pakistan)
officials
feared
that
the
new
government
would
be
hostile
to
such
an
offensive.
"The
report
is
baseless
and
unfounded.
No
such
type
of
approval
has
been
given
to
US
forces.
The
US
had
been
informed
several
times
that
only
Pakistani
forces
had
a
right
to
launch
operation
against
Al
Qaeda
in
the
Tribal
Areas.
We
would
not
allow
forces
of
any
other
country
to
launch
incursions
in
Pakistan," the
Daily
Times
quoted
presidential
spokesman
Rashid
Qureshi
as
saying.
Qureshi said that the Pakistan Foreign Office had lodged a strong protest with the US against the recent missile strike in Pakistan. According to the report, a surge in such air strikes had been witnessed since January after a few key US officials, including intelligence czar Mike McConnell, General Michael Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Admiral William Fallon, visited Pakistan.
The magazine quoted Bruce Riedel, a retired CIA expert on the region, as saying that a new wave of terrorism inside Pakistan had forced Musharraf and new military chief General Ashfaq Kayani to acknowledge that extremists threatening Americans now also posed a growing threat to Pakistan's internal security.
ANI