LONDON, June 30: Senior British officials have accused US forces of “blundering” by a gung-ho approach to the hunt for Al Qaeda remnants, widening a transatlantic rift with Washington, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

It cited a senior official in Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office as saying that US troops conducting house-to-house searches in tribal areas of Pakistan neighbouring Afghanistan of adopting a “march in shooting” strategy.

The official said the US action was “backfiring,” alienating tribal leaders in the remote border zones.

A spokesman for Blair’s office downplayed the newspaper report, saying “we don’t recognise any of these quotes.”

According to the Sunday Telegraph, the official, who is closely involved in the direction of the war on terrorism said: “The Americans think they and the Pakistanis can just march in shooting.

“They don’t understand the sensitivities.

“We (Britain) have years of experience in the tribal areas and we know that using force will just backfire and increase sympathy for Al Qaeda.”

London has outwardly been Washington’s strongest ally in the US-led war on terror launched following the September 11 attacks in the United States which killed nearly 3,000 people.

The Al Qaeda group, led by Osama bin Laden, was accused of carrying out the attacks from its Afghanistan base.

But a number of issues have strained the much-vaunted special relationship between London and Washington, notably over the Middle East, the Kyoto global warming protocol and US tariffs on steel imports.

“You have to remember that this is a rather unpleasant administration,” one British minister involved in talks over the steel tariffs told the paper in a reference to US President George W. Bush’s White House team.

“The fact there’s been a full-blooded attempt to forge a relationship with it hasn’t changed its fundamental nature: protectionist and self-interested.”

A spokesman for US Central Command rejected the accusations of blundering, insisting that US forces were “sensitive to regional issues” and had not been directly involved in operations in the tribal areas.

The spokesman for Blair’s office said suggestions of a rift between London and Washington over the war on terror were “completely wrong.”

He said that the entire Afghanistan campaign had been characterised “by us standing together. That is not going to change.”—AFP