NEW YORK, Feb 22: American officials are reported to have reached a quiet agreement with Pakistani leadership to step up secret air strikes against suspected terrorists.

The New York Times said in a report on Friday that the strikes would use pilotless Predator aircraft. But the Bush administration is said to be concerned the plan may be curtailed or scuttled by changes in the Pakistan government.

Opposition parties and analysts say American officials were misinterpreting the outcome of the elections, which were dominated by the country’s liberal and secular parties.

The new arrangements allow, among other things, an increase in the number and scope of patrols and strikes by armed surveillance aircraft launched from a secret base in Pakistan. This is reported to be a far more aggressive strategy to attack Al Qaeda and the Taliban than had existed before.

The newspaper said that the change, described by senior American and Pakistani officials who would not speak for attribution because of the classified nature of the programme, allows American military commanders greater leeway to choose from what one official who took part in the debate called “a Chinese menu” of strike options.

Instead of having to confirm the identity of a suspected militant leader before attacking, this shift allowed American operators to strike convoys of vehicles that bear the characteristics of Al Qaeda or Taliban leaders on the run, for instance, so long as the risk of civilian casualties is judged to be low.

In the weeks before Monday’s election, a series of meetings among President Bush’s national security advisers resulted in a significant relaxation of the rules under which American forces could aim attacks at suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the tribal areas near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

The new rules of engagement may have their biggest impact at a secret Central Intelligence Agency base in Pakistan whose existence was described by American and Pakistani officials who had previously kept it secret to avoid embarrassing President Pervez Musharraf politically. Mr Musharraf, whose party lost in this week’s election by margins that surprised American officials, has been accused by political rivals of being too close to the United States.

The new agreements with Pakistan came after a trip to the country on Jan 9 by Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, and Gen Michael V. Hayden, the CIA director. The American officials held meetings with Mr Musharraf as well as with the new army chief, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and offered a range of increased covert operations aimed at thwarting intensifying efforts by Al Qaeda and the Taliban to destabilise the Pakistani government.

The question of what to do next in Pakistan, the Times said, is likely to preoccupy the Bush administration in its last year. Officials say there is clear, if unstated, pressure to make a last effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden before Mr Bush leaves office. But several senior officials in the State Department have been warning that the administration’s full-scale backing of Mr Musharraf was a wrong-headed strategy that could now blow up.