US congressmen suggest attack in Pakistan

WASHINGTON: US congressmen Wednesday said that US commandoes are quite raring to attack on Taliban in Pakistan.Talking to Houston Chronicle, he said the US forces should be allowed to launch an attack on Pakistan.According to the congressmen, Pakistan dismissed the option of joint operation in the troubled tribal areas; that is why US should take this responsibility and launch an attack on Pakistan.The lawmakers — Reps. Gene Green, D-Houston, Michael McCaul, R-Austin, and Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo — told the Houston Chronicle in separate interviews that the plans for stepped-up U.S. military operations are in response to Pakistan's failure to disrupt terrorist training camps and cross-border attacks from a region known as "the Federally Administered Tribal Areas," a remote, mountainous border area.The Bush administration is recalibrating U.S. operations in the region because of a 40 percent increase in violent attacks against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan that have pushed U.S. casualties for the month of June beyond the monthly toll in Iraq, the lawmakers said.The Texas congressmen said they devoted much of their delegation's separate meetings with President Pervez Musharraf and Pakistan's prime minister, Yusaf Raza Gillani, last Friday to urging additional action against Islamic militants in the tribal territories.But they said Pakistani officials rejected resumption of the joint U.S.-Pakistani operations that ended in 2003, calling instead for additional U.S. military assistance and intelligence cooperation to target seven or eight terrorist leaders operating in the tribal areas.Pakistan's ineffective campaign makes it "imperative that U.S. forces be allowed to pursue the Taliban and al-Qaida in tribal areas inside Pakistan," McCaul insisted. "If we don't do something now, they're going to strike us again (in the United States) and it is going to be out of this area."Cuellar said that "either Pakistan does more or we will be taking things into our own hands," adding: "If our troops are fired on, there will be hot pursuit into that territory."Army Lt. Col. Mark Wright, serving as a spokesman for the Defense Department, said U.S. forces ''remain ready, willing and able to assist the Pakistanis and to partner with them to provide additional training and to conduct joint operations should they desire."The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.U.S. Predator aircraft, pilotless drones, have carried out at least four missile strikes against suspected terrorists inside Pakistan so far this year, killing at least 45 people, according to the Washington Post.U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan already have exercised hot pursuit on a limited basis to chase Taliban fighters and al-Qaida militants into adjacent Pakistani areas.