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'Mush approved US drone attacks on al-Qaeda targets'
Published on Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 14:50 in 
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PAKISTAN US BOND: President Pervez Musharraf is in a tough spot again.
New Delhi: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is in a tough spot over the reports that he approved recent attacks by US drones inside Pakistani territory.
According to Newsweek officials in the US and Pakistani sources confirm that US missile attacks on al-Qaeda targets on the border with Afghanistan were carried out with the tacit permission of the Pakistani president.
Since January unidentified predator drones or pilot less planes have reportedly struck at least three suspected al-Qaeda hideouts in Pakistan, including an attack in March in South Waziristan that killed 20.
The Newsweek quoting US officials and Pakistani sources said the recent wave of Predator attacks are at least partly the result of understandings the US officials reached with Musharraf and other top Pakistanis, giving Washington virtually unrestricted authority to hit targets in the border areas.
The surge, says the magazine in its upcoming issue, began after visits to Pakistan at the beginning of the year by senior US officials, including intelligence czar Mike McConnell, CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden and Adm.
William Fallon, who recently resigned as commander of the US forces in the region.
Some news reports had said at the time that President Pervez Musharraf had "rebuffed" US proposals to step up combat operations inside Pakistan.
Bruce Riedel, a retired CIA expert on the region, said that a new wave of terrorism inside Pakistan there were 62 suicide attacks last year, after just six in 2006 has forced Musharraf and the new military chief Ashfaq Kayani to acknowledge that the extremists threatening Americans now also pose a growing threat to Pakistan's internal security.
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