US rehearses strikes on Pak: Report

TNN, May 31, 2010, 02.03am IST

NEW DELHI: Even before the heat generated by reports that US was contemplating unilateral strikes against Pakistan could subside, Pakistani media has reported that Washington has already "rehearsed" strikes on Pakistani territory.

Pakistani daily Dawn quoted diplomatic sources to say that the US has completed "dry exercises" to attack targets in Pakistan in the event of any terrorist attack in America.

While Indian officials refrained from commenting, sources said US officials had been alarmed by the recent failed Times Square bomb plot. The paper said this trial exercise was a rehearsal of "a military's combat skills without the use of live ammunition".

The exercise, however, did not involve US troops. "Instead, it projected computer simulations of such an attack with an assessment of a possible counterattack and of the potential resistance US troops might face if they entered Pakistani soil," the report said.

According to the report, the Pakistanis had been informed about the exercise in advance by the US. The report also quoted a diplomatic source as saying the exercise was aimed at convincing Pakistan that its failure to uproot extremism could lead to an attack in the US which, in turn, could lead to military strikes on Pakistan.

The last time US planned such an exercise near the Pakistani border was after the Mumbai attacks. The move, however, was abandoned after army chief Gen Kayani assured US military chief Mike Mullen that Islamabad would do all it can to prevent terrorists active in Pakistan from attacking another country.

The Dawn report quoted a source as saying that the Americans believed there were people in the Pakistani establishment who still sympathised with jihadi elements. These elements, according to the source, "still have a soft corner for Pakistani jihadi elements, particularly those who fought in Kashmir".

The Americans, however, "have concluded that all such groups are linked to al-Qaida, whether they are fighting in Kashmir or Afghanistan, and want all of them uprooted", the report added.

The report quoted diplomatic sources as saying that the US action was aimed at "persuading any elements in the power structure in Islamabad to do what is needed: share more intelligence, stop insisting that there are good Taliban and bad Taliban and to get serious about uprooting all jihadi groups". It was also meant, it said, to ensure that Pakistan was no more lenient in dealing with the likes of Hafiz Saeed.

US officials are saying ties between the alleged Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, and elements of the Pakistani Taliban "have sharpened the Obama administration's need for retaliatory options". "Planning has been reinvigorated in the wake of Times Square," a source told Washington Post.



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