NEW YORK: The CIA drone operations in Pakistan may continue long after US troops have left Afghanistan, The New York Times said on Saturday, revealing that CIA, not military, would remain in charge of drone operations.

However, there have been no drone strikes since the government in Islamabad formally entered peace talks with Taliban, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a group that tracks drone strikes In Pakistan,

But American officials told the newspaper that the drone programme there could continue for years, and Pakistan’s government has long insisted that it be run by the CIA, not the US military.

This was one of the terms of deal reached a decade ago between the Bush administration and Pervez Musharraf, then the president of Pakistan, who said he would allow armed drone strikes in the country’s tribal areas only if they were conducted as a CIA covert action and not acknowledged by either country. For Pakistan to agree to any changes in this arrangement, the United States would most likely have to agree to integrating Pakistan’s military into the drone operations.

A White House spokeswoman told NYT there had been “no change in policy” since President Obama’s speech last May announcing changes to the targeted killing policy.

The newspaper report which claims to examine CIA’s role and the plan to refocus the agency from active operations, the paper quotes a CIA spokesperson as saying. “The plan is to transition to these standards and procedures over time, in a careful, coordinated and deliberate manner.”

Caitlin Hayden, the spokeswoman, added: “I’m not going to speculate on how long the transition will take, but we’re going to ensure that it’s done right and not rushed.”

It was during the string of revolts across the Arab world several years ago that concerns first surfaced that the years of focus on targeting terrorists had undermined the CIA’s ability to forecast and analyse global events. In Egypt, the agency had few sources beyond Omar Suleiman. The country’s intelligence chief and one of the agency’s closest partners in the Middle East, Mr Suleiman, was not about to give the CIA an honest assessment of the fragility of President Hosni Mubarak’s government.

And in Jordan, it is the CIA rather than the Pentagon that is running a programme to arm and train Syrian rebels — a concession to the Jordanian government -- which will not allow an overt military presence in the country, the newspaper said.

The NYT noted: “Just more than a year ago John Brennan, the CIA's newly nominated director, said at his confirmation hearing that it was time to refocus an agency that had become largely a paramilitary organisation after the Sept 11 attacks toward more traditional roles carrying out espionage, intelligence collection and analysis. In a speech last May in which he sought to redefine US policy toward terrorism, President Barack Obama expanded on the theme, announcing new procedures for drone operations, which White House officials said would gradually become the Pentagon’s province.