NEW YORK, June 18: The American military programme to train the Frontier Corps in combating militants “could be postponed or cancelled in the aftermath of US air strikes which killed 11 Pakistani soldiers”, the New York Times said on Wednesday, quoting two Pakistani officials.
“The fury over the air strikes was such that Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the new military chief, who the Americans hoped would be a dependable successor to Mr Musharraf, personally approved an unusually strong statement last week from the Pakistani military, which called the strikes ‘cowardly and unprovoked’,” the newspaper quoted a Pakistani official as saying.
Gen Kayani, the Times quoted American officials as saying, had turned down every suggestion about letting American forces operate in the tribal areas, even on an advisory basis.
A plan for American trainers to accompany Pakistani troops on missions to root out militants in the tribal areas was ruled out completely, a senior Pakistani military official was quoted as saying.
The $400 million training programme is intended to combat militancy by fielding the Frontier Corps, which comprises mostly tribesmen living in the border areas.
According to the newspaper, it was a compromise between American and Pakistani officials looking for the least intrusive way to fortify security in an area where the Pakistan government had rejected the idea of American soldiers and where even the Pakistan Army “is often not welcome”.
The newspaper quoted an official in Islamabad as saying: “The struggle against the Taliban in Afghanistan is faltering not only because Taliban forces from Pakistan are crossing the border into Afghanistan.”
According to another Pakistani official, Pakistan “thinks you have screwed up in Afghanistan and made Pakistan the fall guy”.
The Times said that some Pakistani officials were also convinced that the Americans deliberately fired on their military, killing 11 men from the very paramilitary force the Americans wanted to train, an accusation the Americans denied.The uncertainty over the programme reflects how deeply scarred the United States alliance with Pakistan, already strained, has been since the June 10 air strikes, Pakistani officials and western diplomats said.
SELF-DEFENCE: A number of US military officials told the Times the air strikes had been carried out in self-defence against militants who had attacked American forces in Afghanistan and then fled into Pakistan.
But the Pakistanis continue to dispute vital elements of the American account, the New York Times said.
“This is the first time the US has deliberately targeted cooperating Pakistani forces,” Jehangir Karamat, a former army chief and a former ambassador to the US told the newspaper. “There has been no statement by the US that this was ‘friendly fire’ and that the intention was not to target Pakistani forces.”
A senior Pakistani government official, with long experience in military affairs, summed up the feeling of many in the military, saying the strikes appeared deliberate.
The newspaper observed that ending or delaying the military programme, which is already under way, would deny the US what little leverage it had in the tribal areas.
The Times said that in Washington, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell expressed regret, but did not acknowledge any American culpability pending an investigation by senior Pakistani, Afghan and American officers.
American military spokesmen claimed that a Pakistani liaison officer had been informed of the American intention to strike over the “highly-disputed border between Kunar province in Afghanistan and the Mohmand Agency … in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas”, after American forces were attacked.
However, the Times said: “The Pakistanis vehemently deny the claim.”
They say the American bombs were not used in self-defence, but were aimed at a Frontier Corps post at Goraparai, 160kms northwest of the town of Ghalanai.
A stone hut and seven of nine bunkers in which the soldiers were seeking cover were destroyed, Pakistani officials claimed.
The coordinates of the post were clearly marked and were known to Nato and American forces, they said.
A senior Pakistani official told the newspaper that the strikes were “too accurate and too intense” to have been an accident.
A senior American official in the region rejected Pakistani allegations that American aircraft had deliberately attacked Pakistani soldiers.
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