US to focus on Pakistani border

The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff has called for a new strategy in Afghanistan which will deny militants bases across the border in Pakistan.

Adm Mike Mullen said he had asked for a "a new, more comprehensive military strategy for the region that covers both sides of that border".

The US must work closely with Pakistan to "eliminate [the enemy's] safe havens", he told Congress.

But Pakistan insists it will not allow foreign forces onto its territory.

"There is no question of any agreement or understanding with the coalition forces whereby they are allowed to conduct operations on our side of the border," said Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

A surge of US attacks in Pakistan's border region over the past week has prompted outrage from the government and army.

Now stating it as a strategy will only add to the pressure on Pakistan's new President, Asif Ali Zardari, as he grapples with the militants, the BBC's James Coomarasamy reports from Washington.

'Inextricably linked'

Adm Mullen was speaking a day after US President George W Bush announced that about 4,500 extra US troops would be sent to Afghanistan by February 2009, boosting the 33,000 currently in the country.

Addressing the House Armed Services Committee, he argued that militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan were waging a common fight.

"In my view, these two nations are inextricably linked in a common insurgency that crosses the border between them," he said.

"We can hunt down and kill extremists as they cross over the border from Pakistan... but until we work more closely with the Pakistani government to eliminate the safe havens from which they operate, the enemy will only keep coming."

Adm Mullen conceded the challenge was great, pointing to Afghanistan's drugs and economic problems, and the "significant political uncertainty" in Pakistan.

The White House said on Wednesday that the failure to capture al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden showed the limitations of US military and intelligence operations.

On the eve of the seventh anniversary of 9/11, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said President Bush would have liked to see the al-Qaeda leader brought to justice, but that the US authorities did not have "super powers".

In another development, Canada confirmed its troops would leave Afghanistan by 2011.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Wednesday that his nation - which suffered significant losses in Afghanistan in recent years - had no appetite for keeping its troops on in Afghanistan past a 2011 deadline imposed in March by parliament.