New Delhi, January 3
The Washington-Islamabad relations have taken yet another downturn with the US military’s yesterday’s decision that its troops may pursue attackers into war-on-terror ally Pakistan from within Afghanistan if they come under fire from “hostile forces” along the border.

The US decision of carrying out raids against the Taliban and Al-Qaida cadres fleeing into Pakistan from the virtually open border with Afghanistan and the developments since the last weekend’s unprecedented direct clashes between the US and Pakistani troops are being watched keenly by the Vajpayee government here.

Union Home Minister L.K. Advani had in 1998 talked of a proactive approach which his government intended to adopt in combating militancy in Jammu and Kashmir and that statement had then raised eyebrows.

The US statement said last weekend’s operation, in which a US soldier was wounded when he was shot in the head by a Pakistani border guard, was in response to attacks made by hostile forces. “Coalition forces will defend themselves from attack,” it said. The American statement came as the US military sought to clarify events surrounding a clash between its soldiers in Afghanistan and a Pakistani border guard on December 29 last that led to a US warplane bombing a religious school which Islamabad claims is in Pakistani territory.

The flexing of military muscle by the USA had sparked countrywide protests and rallies by leaders of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) — the six-party alliance which rules NWFP and is a coalition partner in another Pakistani province, Baluchistan — in major cities and towns across Pakistan today.

According to sources in the Vajpayee government, if the December 29 skirmishes between the troops of the USA and Pakistan had triggered off a political and diplomatic crisis for President Pervez Musharraf, the January 2 US statement has snowballed it.