January 4, 2003	Saturday	Shawwal 30, 1423

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

WASHINGTON, Jan 3: US military officials in Afghanistan have once again said that they reserve the right “to cross into Pakistan” in pursuit of Al Qaeda and Taliban fugitives.

The affirmation follows a statement in Islamabad by the Foreign Office spokesman that Pakistan was not aware of this development.

“US forces reserve the right to pursue enemy attackers across the border to evade retaliation,” Capt Alayne Cramer, a spokeswoman for the US forces at the Bagram Air Base near Kabul, said.

“Yes, we can enter Pakistan, that’s the policy,” said Cramer, talking to Dawn by telephone from her base.

“But we have deliberately not crossed the border in hot pursuit, the closest we came was on the 29th of December,” she added.

In Islamabad, Foreign Office spokesman Aziz Ahmad Khan said his country was looking into the American military’s statement, but had no immediate comment. “We are in the process of verifying if the statement was really made and at what level,” he told reporters.

The State Department in Washington also played down the incident. Department’s spokesman Richard Boucher told an earlier briefing that both the US and Pakistan were aware of the difficult situation along the Afghan border.

The terrorists operating along this border, he said, were a threat to Pakistan as well as to other nations, including the United States. “So we’ve been working very closely with Pakistan in the war against terrorism. That includes cooperation and coordination of our efforts along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.”

He said Pakistani authorities were investigating the incident that led to a clash between the troops of the two countries earlier this week but Washington had not received “any kind of protest” from Islamabad.

“This is something that we and they are addressing,” he said.

“It has been a long-standing policy that if we are pursuing enemy forces, we are not just going to tiptoe and stop right when we get to the border,” said US military spokesman Maj Stephen Clutter at Bagram air base, AFP adds.

“We do reserve the right to go after them and pursue them and that is something Pakistan is aware of.”

He added that to his knowledge US forces had never exercised that right.

In an e-mail sent to Reuters on Friday in response to a question, the US military said it had the “express consent of the Pakistani government” to pursue attackers who escaped capture in Afghanistan and fled across the border into Pakistan.

But Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad told Reuters there was no blanket acceptance of such action.

“There are 10 or 12 people from the FBI searching (for suspects in Pakistan),” he said. “But for the uniformed army to enter our area for any action, that is not allowed. Without our permission that is not allowed.”