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US steps up efforts for unilateral strikes

Qaeda Targets in Pakistan

AFP, Islamabad
The United States is escalating unilateral strikes against al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan's tribal areas amid fears that the new government here will curtail such attacks, a report said yesterday.
The Washington Post quoted US officials as saying that the US administration wants to do as much damage as it can to al-Qaeda because it is worried that President Pervez Musharraf will have reduced powers in coming months.
Musharraf s allies lost elections last month, and new prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told US
President George W Bush this week that a broader approach to the "war on terror" is necessary, including political solutions.
The Post report said that in the past three months US Predator drones hit at least three sites used by al-Qaeda militants in tribal regions near the Afghan border, killing about 45 Arab, Afghan and other foreign fighters.
The strikes followed a "tacit understanding” with Musharraf and army chief General Ashfaq Kayani that permits US strikes on foreign rebels in Pakistan, but not against Pakistani Taliban, the Post
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quoted officials as saying.
It quoted one senior official as describing the strikes as a "shake the tree" strategy designed to force Osama bin Laden and key lieutenants to move in ways that US intelligencecandetect.
In January, a missile strike-attrib -u ted to the Uni ted States killed senior al-Qaeda commander Abu Laith al-Libi.
There was no immediate response from Pakistani officials on the report.
Pakistan has never formally admitted to allowing such missile strikes and Musharraf earlier this year said that unauthorised military actions on Pakistani soil would be treated as an invasion.
The report came as two senior US diplomats. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, continued a visit to Pakistan apparently aimed at wooing the new government
A senior partner in the new coalition government, former premier Nawaz Sharif, warned the envoys earlier this week that parliament would review Musharrafs "one-man" strategy against Islamic
extremism.
Sharif said he told them that it was unacceptable for Pakistan - which has suffered a recent wave of suicide bombings blamed on militants -- to become a "murder-house" for the sake ofUS policies.
Opposition leader Benazir "BhUttb. of VW pal^the 'new prime minister is a member, was assassinated in a suicide attack in December.
In Peshawar, at least five people were killed yesterday in a rocket attack on an ambulance in a northwestern Pakistani district troubled by sectarian violence, security officials said.
The ambulance was on its way to Peshawar from the town of Tall in Parachinar district when it came under attack, a security official said.
"Initial reports say five people were killed, two wounded,’ the official said requesting anonymity.
He said the victims included women. "The cause of the attack was not immediately clear," the official added.
Parachinar district has been tense following recent sectarian violence involving militants from Shiite and Sunni Muslims communities.