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No need to base troops on our soil, Pak tells US

Islamabad on Thursday turned down Washington's request for deployment of American special forces on its soil, The Washington Post quoted senior Pakistani officials as saying.

The US State Department, intelligence and military officials had asked Pakistan to support military efforts against terrorist Osama bin Laden, including secret deployment of the elite special forces in its northern territory, Pakistani officials said.

The US authorities said Tajikistan had, meanwhile, granted permission to place special forces at a site on the Afghan border.

The issue of joint US-Pak efforts to force the Taleban to give up bin Laden had been discussed regularly for more than a year during visits to Islamabad by Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet and General Tommy R Franks, commander-in-chief of the US Central Command, the officials said.

Although Pakistan was a major staging ground in the 1980s for covert US operations and support for Islamic rebels fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan, "relations between the one-time allies have soured since the end of the Cold War," the Post said.

PTI

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