September 07, 2008	Sunday	Ramazan 06, 1429

WASHINGTON, Sept 6: A top commander of US forces in Afghanistan has demanded thousands of additional troops to combat violence along the border with Pakistan while Islamabad’s envoy in Washington warned that cross-border raids into Pakistani territory were counter-productive.

Army Gen Jeffrey J. Schloesser, who took command of American-controlled eastern Afghanistan in April, told a briefing in Washington on Friday that continuing with the current level of about 34,000 US troops for an extended period would result in a “slow win.”

“It’s not the way that I think the Afghans, the international community and the American people would like to see us conduct this war,” Gen Schloesser said in a video conference with journalists at the Pentagon. “I’d like to speed that up.”

He acknowledged that recent Pakistani military action in Fata has decreased cross-border incursions into Afghanistan. Still, violence overall in eastern Afghanistan is up 20 to 30 per cent in the first eight months of the year compared with last year, he said.

Gen Schloesser predicted reduction in Taliban activities in winter due to tough weather conditions but warned that violence in 2008 will still be higher than any previous winter since 2002.

Not far from the Pentagon where Gen Schloesser briefed the media, Pakistan’s Ambassador Husain Haqqani told a gathering of US think-tank experts and policymakers that sending US ground troops into Pakistan will not help reduce militancy in the region.

“Unilateral action by American forces does not help the war against terror because it only enrages public opinion,” he said.

Mr Haqqani said that Wednesday’s US raid at a suspected militant target in South Waziristan, which killed 20 people, including women and children, only helped the militants.

“In this particular incident, nothing was gained by the action of the troops” as commandos took “no one significant” and made no major gains, he said.

Mr Haqqani declined to discuss details of the attack or his discussions with US officials on the raid, but warned that such actions do the work of the militants by creating more support for them among the people.

“We need more Pakistanis to understand the American perspective and be sympathetic to it, rather than enrage more Pakistanis against the United States,” he said.

But Mr Haqqani assured his American audience at Washington’s Carnegie Endowment that Wednesday’s incident will not “come between close ties and strong military, intelligence and political cooperation between our countries.”