Pat Dollard | Young Americans

The Bush administration isn’t satisfied with the quality of information it’s getting about terrorist groups and militants operating in Pakistan’s volatile tribal area, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday.

Despite the shortcomings, the United States won’t conduct military strikes on its own inside Pakistan unless President Pervez Musharraf’s government requests such direct support, said Dell Dailey, the State Department’s counterterrorism chief.

“There’s gaps in intelligence,” Dailey said during a meeting with reporters. “We don’t have enough information about what’s going on there. Not on al-Qaida. Not on foreign fighters. Not on the Taliban.”

Dailey, a retired Army lieutenant general with extensive background in special operations, said the lack of information makes him “uncomfortable.” Yet the solution to the problem rests mainly with the Pakistanis, who would likely see too much U.S. involvement as an unwelcome intrusion.

More than 40 percent of Pakistanis support or are sympathetic to al-Qaida and radical Islam, Dailey said.

“We have to be careful conducting operations in a sovereign country, particularly one that’s a friend of ours and one that has given us a lot of support,” Dailey said. “The blowback would be pretty serious.”

Bush administration officials have been discussing expanding beyond small teams of U.S. military trainers and advisers now in the country. Overall, there are fewer than 100 American personnel there. Groups in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan willing to battle al-Qaida would be given special emphasis under a broader program of support.

Dailey’s comments came on the same day that Islamic militants in Pakistan attacked a fort near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, triggering a fight with government forces that left at least five troops and 37 fighters dead, the Pakistani army said.

The attack occurred in South Waziristan, the lawless tribal region where al-Qaida- and Taliban-linked militants operate.

Musharraf played down the impact of recent attacks in the region, saying Tuesday they were “pinpricks” that his government must manage.

Aside from political repercussions of the U.S. acting unilaterally, Dailey said trying to blend even highly skilled U.S. commandos into such a hostile area is highly risky. Even a seemingly innocuous mistake, such as wearing a piece of native clothing incorrectly, could tip off the enemy and undermine the mission.

Dailey took over the State Department post in July after retiring from the Army after a 36-year career. His last military assignment was director of the Center for Special Operations, an organization in Tampa, Fla., that oversees clandestine missions against terrorist targets.

Despite Pakistan’s political instability, Dailey said he is confident the country’s nuclear arsenal is being properly protected. It’s unlikely the United States would be asked to help provide security for those weapons, he said.

“The nuclear weapons for the Pakistanis is a crown jewel for them,” Dailey said. “And if they had to have non-Pakistanis protect it, I think that would be really difficult for the Pakistani people to accept, and very difficult for the Pakistani government to solicit.”

Bruce Riedel, a former U.S. intelligence official, said it is unlikely Pakistan’s internal security would be taken over by Islamic radicals. But the possibility that one or two atomic weapons could be stolen from Pakistan’s inventory by al-Qaida or Taliban sympathizers remains a “nightmare scenario,” he said.

“If this is done well and is secret, even Pakistani authorities might have no knowledge,” Riedel said in an interview.

While al-Qaida remains a serious threat, Dailey described the group as being increasingly disorganized and in search of new methods for attacking Western targets. As evidence, he pointed to the terror group’s continued focus on highjacking commercial airliners to cause maximum damage.

“I do think it’s a lack of imagination,” Dailey said. “I think that they are inadequate. I think that they can’t centrally plan from where they are currently located, whether it’s Pakistan or not,” he said.

(AP)

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Berlin and Barry Schweid in Washington contributed to this report.

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State Department: http://www.state.gov