Karzai backs U.S. on Pakistan

By Augustine Anthony

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai backed a proposed U.S. strategy on Thursday to hit al Qaeda and Taliban militants in neighbouring Pakistan, but NATO said it would not join any cross-border U.S. raids.

Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Kayani has said his country would not allow foreign troops to conduct operations on its soil, warning that Pakistan's sovereignty would be defended "at all cost."

But The New York Times reported that President George W. Bush secretly approved orders in July allowing U.S. special forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without approval from the Pakistan government.

It said Bush's orders reflect concern about safe havens for al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan and an American view that Pakistan lacks the will and ability to combat militants.

"The situation in the tribal areas is not tolerable," the Times quoted a senior U.S. official as saying. "We have to be more assertive. Orders have been issued."

Helicopter-borne U.S. commandos carried out a ground assault in Pakistan's South Waziristan, a sanctuary for al Qaeda operatives, last week, the first known incursion into Pakistan by U.S. troops since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. The raid killed 20 people, including women and children.

U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Wednesday he was "looking at a new, more comprehensive strategy" that would cover both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Karzai faces an intensified insurgency in Afghanistan and has advocated hot-pursuit missions into Pakistan before. At a news conference in Kabul on Thursday he backed Mullen's shift.