ISLAMABAD, July 27: President Pervez Musharraf on Friday firmly rejected US threats to strike militants holed up in Pakistan territory near the Afghan border, saying that American forces would not be allowed to operate in the area as Pakistani forces were quite capable of doing this.

“Inside Pakistani territory only Pakistani forces will operate and they are fully capable of performing this task,” Musharraf told reporters as he left for a visit to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“We are fighting extremism and terrorism in our national interest and we do not have to please anyone,” the president said.

He also rejected the US allegations that Al Qaeda was regrouping in Pakistan's tribal belt, where hundreds of pro-Taliban militants took shelter after US-led forces overthrew Afghanistan's Taliban regime in 2001.

“A small number of Al Qaeda elements present in the area are on the run and we are pursuing them,” the president said.

The country has been gripped by a wave of suicide attacks and other militant violence since a bloody army operation to clear militants from Islamabad's Lal Masjid earlier this month. More than 200 people have died in the attacks.

Senior US State Department troubleshooter Nicholas Burns said this week that Washington would retain the option of targeting Osama bin Laden's terror group in Pakistani-Afghan border areas in some circumstances.

The White House's top counter-terrorism official Frances Townsend on Sunday caused a stir by refusing to rule out a military incursion into the remote Pakistani regions close to the border with Afghanistan.—AFP