Kandahar governor denies torture claim

Khalid says he's never interrogated or abused a prisoner in custody; Hillier says governor is doing "phenomenal work"

OTTAWA and WASHINGTON — The governor of Kandahar says he's never interrogated, much less abused, a prisoner in his government's custody.

Asadullah Khalid told The Canadian Press that the treatment of Afghan prisoners should be a military issue, not a political one.

Mr. Khalid's response to allegations he was involved in the torture and abuse of prisoners comes a day after Canada's top soldier, General Rick Hillier, praised him for doing "phenomenal work."

Mr. Khalid said he doesn't go around to prisons and interrogate people because it isn't his job. And he said his accuser likely never met him but was just looking for a way out of jail.

Mr. Khalid said the government of Afghanistan is stronger now and in control of the conditions in prison.

Canada's top soldier says the governor of Kandahar province is doing "phenomenal work," and that allegations of torture against him are up to Afghans to investigate.

While the opposition has asked why Canadians weren't informed about the allegations 10 months ago, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said the prisoner who made the charges against Mr. Khalid was not handed over by Canadians and that it's an issue for Kabul to deal with.

Mr. MacKay and Gen. Hillier made their remarks as opposition members demanded that the Harper government put pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to investigate the allegations. They also wanted to know what the Department of Foreign Affairs did with the information and why it has taken this long for it to emerge.

Gen. Hillier confirmed he was aware of allegations against the governor, but said it is up to the Afghan government to deal with them. He also praised Mr. Khalid for the work he has done in Kandahar.

"Governor Asadullah has been doing some phenomenal work in Kandahar province. Obviously, we have worked with him because he is the governor there. And we have seen some incredible changes in the province, and if there's an issue of any kind of impropriety whatsoever, that's an issue for the Afghanistan government."

According to a censored report published in The Globe and Mail yesterday, a prisoner held in Kandahar told two Canadian officials last April of interrogations as well as a beating and electric shocks he received from an individual whose identification was blacked out. Sources have told The Globe that "the governor" were the censored words, in reference to Mr. Khalid.

Outside the House of Commons, Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae said Canada should use its influence with Mr. Karzai to have the matter investigated. He was also angry that the federal government did not disclose the incident when it first occurred.

"We're not there to cover things up, we're not there to cover up for some guy who's corrupt. We're not there to cover up for some guy who's allowing beatings to go on in a private jail," Mr. Rae said.

In the House, Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale called the incident a cover-up.

"Has the government even bothered to investigate the allegations against Mr. Khalid as specifically required under Canada's detainee-transfer agreement?"

Mr. MacKay said that the prisoner who made the complaint had not been transferred by Canadian Forces into Afghan detention.

"The allegation with respect to the governor is not a Canadian-transferred prisoner," Mr. MacKay said.

"Second, with respect to the governor of Kandahar, let us not forget that this is an individual appointed by the sovereign elected government of Afghanistan."

He noted that when Canada did hear of a credible complaint from a Canadian-transferred prisoner, an investigation was launched. The government also stopped transferring detainees in early November after that incident.

In Kandahar, Mr. Khalid's staff said yesterday that the governor would respond to the allegations that a secret prison was located inside his compound and that he had personally engaged in torture and abuse of detainees. However, the governor didn't return calls yesterday.

The International Committee of the Red Cross was told last spring by Canadian diplomats of the allegations against Mr. Khalid, Graziella Piccolo, an ICRC spokeswoman in Kabul, confirmed.

But the ICRC won't tell Canada whether it investigated the allegations nor the outcome of any investigation.

"Should an authority, such as the Canadian government, decide to share information with the ICRC about detainees held by another authority, such as the Afghan government, the ICRC would address these concerns only with the detaining authorities."

Former foreign affairs minister John Manley, who headed a recent panel looking into the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, could not be reached for comment over the allegations against Mr. Khalid.

Meanwhile, Gen. Hillier said yesterday that Canadian soldiers won't be able to avoid combat if they remain in Kandahar and that switching places with a NATO country in a quieter region of Afghanistan is not an option, The Canadian Press reported.

While the Liberals have suggested remaining in Afghanistan only for training rather than combat, Gen. Hillier said the need for troops is in the south and that means combat.

"Certainly, if you're in Kandahar, you're going to be in combat operations," he said.

Gen. Hillier said that the report of the panel led by Mr. Manley that more troops are needed in the south only echoes the frustration of NATO military commanders from many countries.

Finally, Gen. Hillier told reporters that he was not angry last week when he heard that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's communications director, Sandra Buckler, had said the military did not inform the government that transfers of prisoners had been suspended, a statement she retracted the next day.

"I was on the beach in the Dominican Republic. I had a little break, and I heard about that, and, can I say this without everybody beating up on me across Canada? I was on my third rum and Coke, and I really didn't give a damn."

Gen. Hillier said the military did inform the government right away when the transfers were suspended in November.

Media bidding war starts for Guantanamo ex-detainee

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian David Hicks, the only Guantanamo Bay detainee convicted of terrorism charges, is at the centre of a worldwide media bidding war for his story, with a possible price tag of A$1 million (US$892,000), local media said.

Hicks, 32, has had 30 offers from television and publishing firms in Australia, the United States and Italy, his lawyer told The Australian newspaper.

Media analysts say Hicks' story could fetch A$1 million, the newspaper said on Friday, but Australian laws preventing people profiting from their crimes may deny Hicks any money.

Hicks' father, Terry, told The Australian that most of the money paid for his son's story would be donated to charity, but that he should keep some to compensate for his six years in prison.

Hicks is currently prevented from talking to the media until a U.S.-gag order expires on March 26.

Hicks, who is now free and living in his hometown of Adelaide, was released from an Australian prison in December after spending over six years behind bars, the majority in solitary confinement in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

He was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and spent over five years in Guantanamo before becoming the first person to be sentenced under the alternate war crimes tribunals created by President George W. Bush's administration to try non-American captives.

The former kangaroo skinner admitted training with al Qaeda and meeting its leader Osama bin Laden, whom he described as "lovely", according to police evidence given to the court.

Mukasey hints at Bush's permission for torture

Under questioning from a Democratic senator, US attorney general Michael Mukasey today suggested that George Bush might have personally authorised the waterboarding of suspected terrorists.
Mukasey immediately corrected himself to say that he was not permitted to discuss past events. But in describing the process by which the CIA could seek legal clearance to resume waterboarding, he appeared to tie the president to the controversial technique.

When Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein asked if the current path to authorising waterboarding - a request from the CIA director, followed by approval from the attorney general, followed by consultation with the president - had applied in the past, Mukasey said yes.

"I should take a step back," he then added. "I'm not authorised to say what happened in the past, but I was told this wasn't news."
Feinstein pointed to the Bush administration's reported admission that the CIA waterboarded at least three senior members of al-Qaida. Given that the outlined process for authorising the tactic would have involved Bush, she repeated, "Did the president approve that?"

Mukasey declined to answer the question. His refusal to state directly whether waterboarding, which is not currently in use by the CIA, is a form of torture nearly prevented Mukasey from taking over the justice department last fall.

During Mukasey's appearance today before the senate judiciary committee, several Democrats sought to pin him down on his views of the interrogation method. Considered illegal by human rights groups and some in the US military, waterboarding involves simulating the sensation of drowning by dousing a prisoner in water.

Mukasey said he would consider waterboarding to be torture if he were personally subjected to it. But he contended that its application by the US involved a separate balancing test, weighing the cost of the brutal action against the value of the information it could yield.

"I don't think I'm saying it is simply a relative issue," Mukasey told Democratic senator Joseph Biden. "There is a statute under which it is a relative issue."

Mukasey invoked the so-called "shocks the conscience" standard, causing Biden to marvel at the implication that the potential profit from waterboarding could have any role in determining its moral value.

"I find [Mukasey's interpretation] to be fairly unique," Biden said. "Matter of fact, it shocks my conscience a little bit."

In addition to its souring of Democratic relations with Mukasey, the debate over waterboarding has fuelled a criminal investigation at the justice department into videotapes trashed by the CIA in 2005.

The tapes, destroyed as Congress moved to pass a ban on inhumane interrogations, show two al-Qaida members being questioned and potentially waterboarded by the CIA on foreign soil.

The justice department has appointed a Connecticut prosecutor to probe whether US intelligence officials broke the law or violated court orders by destroying the tapes.

Mukasey also was asked whether private contractors in the CIA's employ used harsh interrogation tactics, but said he did not know. The Washington Post reported last year that such contractors comprise about one-third of the spy agency's
workforce.

Mukasey Won't Comment on Waterboarding

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday he will refuse to publicly say whether the interrogation tactic known as waterboarding is illegal, digging in against critics who want the Bush administration to define it as torture.

In a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, Mukasey said he has finished a review of Justice Department memos about the CIA's current methods of interrogating terror suspects and finds them to be lawful. He said waterboarding currently is not used by the spy agency.

Since waterboarding is not part of what Mukasey described as a "limited set of methods" used by interrogators now, the attorney general said he would not rule on whether it is illegal.

"I understand that you and some other members of the (Judiciary) Committee may feel that I should go further in my review, and answer questions concerning the legality of waterboarding under current law," Mukasey wrote in his three-page letter to Leahy, D-Vt. "I understand the strong interest in this question, but I do not think it would be responsible for me, as attorney general, to provide an answer."

The attorney general added: "If this were an easy question, I would not be reluctant to offer my views on this subject. But, with respect, I believe it is not an easy question. There are some circumstances where current law would appear clearly to prohibit the use of waterboarding. Other circumstances would present a far closer question."

The letter does not elaborate on what the other circumstances are.

Mukasey's letter was sent on the eve of his appearance at a Justice Department oversight hearing chaired by Leahy. It is Mukasey's first appearance before the committee since he took office Nov. 9.

In a terse statement released minutes after Mukasey's letter surfaced, Leahy called the attorney general's position a "last minute response" that merely parrots the Bush administration's longtime dodge on whether waterboarding is legal.

"It does not, however, answer the critical questions we have been asking about its legality," Leahy said in the statement. "Attorney General Mukasey knows that this will not end the matter and expects to be asked serious questions at the hearing tomorrow."

Waterboarding is an interrogation tactic that involves strapping down a person and pouring water over his cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning. The practice was banned by the CIA and the Pentagon in 2006.

Mukasey wrote that he would not publicly conclude that waterboarding is illegal because doing so could reveal too many "limits and contours" about the highly classified interrogation program to terrorists or other adversaries. He also noted that some senators resisted specifically banning waterboarding in 2006, when Congress passed the Military Commissions Act.

Congress has prohibited cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of terror suspects. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a key sponsor of the 2006 bill, has said he was personally assured by administration officials that waterboarding was prohibited under the new law.

The issue of waterboarding briefly snarled Mukasey's confirmation hearings by the same Senate committee last October. At the time, Mukasey refused to define waterboarding as torture because he was unfamiliar with the classified Justice Department memos describing the process and legal arguments surrounding it.

He promised then, however, to review the memos if confirmed and return an answer to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Tuesday's letter represents that response.

Waterboarding also is at the heart of a Justice Department criminal investigation over whether the CIA illegally or otherwise improperly destroyed videotapes in 2005 of two terror suspects being interrogated. The tapes showed harsh interrogations, including possible waterboarding, of suspected terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in 2002, when both suspects were held in secret CIA prisons overseas. They were destroyed as intelligence officials debated whether waterboarding should be declared illegal.

Critics want the Justice Department to join other nations and outlaw waterboarding as illegal. But U.S. intelligence officials fear that doing so could make government interrogators - including those from the CIA - vulnerable to retroactive criminal charges or civil lawsuits.

Ten senators demanded last week that Mukasey immediately clarify his stand on waterboarding. His non-answer Tuesday infuriated Democrats, who said he appeared unable to address what they called a simple legal question.

Mukasey "seems constitutionally incapable of rendering judgment on a simple and straightforward legal question," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., in a statement.

But the attorney general said the matter was far too complicated to easily resolve.

"Reasonable people can disagree, and have disagreed, about these matters," Mukasey wrote Tuesday. "It is precisely because the issue is so important, and the questions so difficult, that I, as the attorney general, should not provide answers absent a set of circumstances that call for those answers. Those circumstances do not present themselves today, and may never prevent themselves in the future."

U.S. used waterboarding: ex-spy chief

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States used waterboarding in terrorism interrogations but no longer does, a former U.S. spy chief said in the Bush administration's clearest confirmation of the technique's use.

U.S. officials have been reluctant to acknowledge the CIA's use of the simulated drowning technique, which human rights groups call an illegal form of torture.

The remarks by former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte in an interview with National Journal magazine come as senators are expected on Wednesday to grill Attorney General Michael Mukasey on a promised review of the legality of interrogation methods.

Asked by the magazine if debate over U.S. counterterrorism techniques was hampering its effort in a "war of ideas," Negroponte said, "We've taken steps to address the issue of interrogations, for instance, and waterboarding has not been used in years."

Negroponte served from 2005 to 2007 as the first director of national intelligence, a position created by President George W. Bush in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Negroponte is now deputy secretary of state. He spoke in an interview published in the National Journal's January 25 issue.

"It (waterboarding) wasn't used when I was director of national intelligence, nor even a few years before that," he said. "I get concerned that we're too retrospective and tend to look in the rearview mirror too often at things that happened four or even six years ago."

Negroponte's remarks appear to confirm earlier reports that the CIA discontinued waterboarding in 2003, after using it on three "high-value" detainees. Vice President Dick Cheney once suggested waterboarding was "an important tool" used to interrogate September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Bush has regularly insisted that the United States does not torture but has declined to discuss what interrogation techniques are used. The CIA declined comment on Negroponte's remarks.
Mukasey, who took office in November, promised in his Senate confirmation hearings to review U.S. interrogation methods. But he gave no sign in a meeting with reporters last week that he was ready to discuss the review at Wednesday's hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mukasey said it would focus on the existing interrogation program and the validity of department legal opinions regarding it -- a hint that he might not review discontinued practices.

Mukasey made no mention of the review in his prepared testimony to the committee, released by the Justice Department on Monday.

Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, took note of the omission and vowed in a statement to ask Mukasey "whether he agrees that waterboarding is torture and illegal."

Mukasey was asked last week if he would answer senators' inevitable questions about the issue, and replied, "I didn't say that I wouldn't answer it, I didn't say that I would."

Mukasey on January 2 ordered the Justice Department to investigate the CIA's destruction of videotapes depicting the harsh interrogations of two terrorism suspects in 2002. At least one of the subjects, Abu Zubaydah, was believed to have been subjected to waterboarding.

Mukasey has rejected calls to appoint an independent counsel for the investigation. He has indicated investigators would be free to pursue evidence of illegal interrogation techniques in their probe, but department officials have said the focus remains on the tapes' destruction.

Justice Nomination Seen as Snub to Democrats

The Justice Department lawyer who wrote a series of classified legal opinions in 2005 authorizing harsh C.I.A. interrogation techniques was renominated by the White House on Wednesday to a senior department post, a move that was seen as a snub to Senate Democrats who have long opposed his appointment.

The lawyer, Steven G. Bradbury, who has run the department’s Office of Legal Counsel without Senate confirmation for more than two years, has been repeatedly nominated to the job of assistant attorney general for legal counsel.

But the earlier nominations stalled in the Senate because of a dispute with the Justice Department over its failure to provide Congress with copies of legal opinions on a variety of terrorism issues. Under Senate rules that place a time limit on nominations, Mr. Bradbury’s earlier nominations expired.

Late last year, Democrats urged the White House to withdraw Mr. Bradbury’s name once and for all and find a new candidate for the post after it was disclosed in news reports in October that he was the author of classified memorandums that gave approval to harsh interrogation techniques, including head slapping, exposure to cold and simulated drowning, even when used in combination.

Mr. Bradbury’s memorandums were described by Democrats as an effort by the Bush administration to circumvent laws prohibiting torture and to undermine a public legal opinion issued by the Justice Department in 2004 that declared torture to be “abhorrent.”

The department and the White House have insisted that there are no contradictions between Mr. Bradbury’s legal opinions, which are still secret, and laws and rules governing interrogation techniques. A department spokesman, Peter A. Carr, said Wednesday that the department remained eager to see Mr. Bradbury confirmed.

“Steve Bradbury is a dedicated public servant and a superb lawyer, who has led with distinction the department’s Office of Legal Counsel,” Mr. Carr said. “He has proven invaluable to the department, and we will continue to work with the Senate to get him confirmed.”

Joe Shoemaker, a spokesman for Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said that by putting Mr. Bradbury’s name forward again as a nominee, “the president has thumbed his nose at Congress and chosen an individual who has been involved in authorizing some of the most controversial policies of this administration.”

Mr. Durbin led the previous efforts to reject Mr. Bradbury’s nomination and sits on the Judiciary Committee, which would have to approve the nomination.

Mr. Bradbury’s new nomination is almost certain to be a focus of questions next week when Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey is scheduled to appear before the Judiciary Committee for his first public hearing since his confirmation to the job in November.

Mr. Mukasey has suggested that he is a firm supporter of the Bush administration’s tough anti-terrorism policies, and his nomination was nearly derailed over criticism of his refusal to condemn as torture the interrogation practice known as waterboarding. He has since said he is studying its legality.

Mr. Durbin and the nine other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee joined in a letter on Wednesday asking Mr. Mukasey to clarify his views on waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques. The letter noted there had been “ample time for you to study this issue and reach a conclusion” and asked him to respond to the question: “Is the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique illegal under U.S. law, including terrorism obligations?”

Also Wednesday, Vice President Dick Cheney offered a broad and impassioned defense of the administration’s antiterrorism efforts as he urged Congress to act quickly in reauthorizing broad wiretapping powers for the National Security Agency and in giving broad immunity to phone companies involved in the wiretaps.

The vice president, who was closely involved in the N.S.A.’s program of eavesdropping without warrants from its inception weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, depicted the vote in the Senate as a matter of national security.

“It is a fact,” Mr. Cheney told a friendly audience at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group in Washington, “that the danger to our country remains very real, and that the terrorists are still determined to hit us.”

Democrats concede that they probably lack the votes to stop a White House-backed plan to give immunity to phone carriers that assisted in the N.S.A. program, and they urged President Bush anew on Wednesday to agree to a one-month extension in the law to allow time for a full debate.

No Secret C.I.A. Buildup For Pakistan

WASHINGTON — The top two American intelligence officials traveled secretly to Pakistan early this month to press President Pervez Musharraf to allow the Central Intelligence Agency greater latitude to operate in the tribal territories where Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups are all active, according to several officials who have been briefed on the visit.

But in the unannounced meetings on Jan. 9 with the two American officials — Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, and Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director — Mr. Musharraf rebuffed proposals to expand any American combat presence in Pakistan, either through unilateral covert C.I.A. missions or by joint operations with Pakistani security forces.

Instead, Pakistan and the United States are discussing a series of other joint efforts, including increasing the number and scope of missions by armed Predator surveillance aircraft over the tribal areas, and identifying ways that the United States can speed information about people suspected of being militants to Pakistani security forces, officials said.

American and Pakistani officials have questioned each other in recent months about the quality and time lines of information that the United States has given to Pakistan to use in focusing on those extremists. American officials have complained that the Pakistanis are not seriously pursuing Al Qaeda in the region.

The Jan. 9 meetings, the first visit with Mr. Musharraf by senior administration officials since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, also included the new army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the director of Pakistan’s leading military intelligence agency, Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj. American officials said the visit was prompted by an increasing sense of urgency at the highest levels of the United States government that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts to destabilize the Pakistani government.

The C.I.A. has fired missiles from Predator aircraft in the tribal areas several times, with varying degrees of success. Intelligence officials said they believed that in January 2006 an airstrike narrowly missed killing Ayman al-Zawahri, the second-ranking Qaeda leader, who had attended a dinner in Damadola, a Pakistani village.

Pakistani authorities, in interviews, say they have more than 100,000 troops operating in the region, including a sizable force conducting what they said was a major offensive in South Waziristan. But in the White House, the Pentagon and the C.I.A., frustrations remain high, and there is concern that Mr. Musharraf’s political problems will distract him from what the administration regards as its last chance to take aggressive action.

Despite the insistence of administration officials that the United States and Pakistan have a common goal in fighting Al Qaeda, Mr. Musharraf has made clear in public proclamations that it is far from his first priority. At the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week, Mr. Musharraf said several times that the 100,000 Pakistani troops that he said were now along the border were hunting for Taliban extremists and “miscreants,” but he also said there was no particular effort being put into the search for Qaeda fighters.

In Washington, however, the Bush administration has said that fighting terrorists, chiefly Al Qaeda, is the primary purpose of the $10 billion in American aid that has been sent to Pakistan, mostly for reimbursements for the cost of patrolling the tribal areas. President Bush has often praised Mr. Musharraf for fighting terrorism, pointing out that Al Qaeda has tried to kill the Pakistani leader. But White House officials were silent when Mr. Musharraf said this week that his efforts were focused on the Taliban, and that the main problem the United States faced was in Afghanistan, not Pakistan.

Accounts of the discussions between Mr. Musharraf and the intelligence officials were provided by American and Pakistani officials over the past two weeks after The New York Times inquired about the secret trip. While officials confirmed some details of the discussion, much remains unknown about the continuing dialogue between Islamabad and Washington.

The trip by Mr. McConnell and General Hayden, a 14,000-mile over-and-back visit for one day of discussions, occurred just five days after senior administration officials debated new strategies for dealing with Pakistan. No decisions were made at that meeting of the National Security Council, which gathered all of Mr. Bush’s top national security officials but not the president.

In the ensuing three weeks, however, the debate appeared to be intensifying, as senior American officials said they believed that American forces — whether as combat troops or trainers — could enhance the efforts of Pakistan’s military in the mountainous and lawless Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

“The purpose of the mission,” a senior official said, “was to convince Musharraf that time is ticking away,” and that the increased attacks on Pakistan would ultimately undermine his effort to stay in office.

Other officials said that recent intelligence analysis indicated that Al Qaeda was now operating in the tribal areas with an impunity similar to the freedom that it had in Afghanistan before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The C.I.A. operatives in Afghanistan and the covert Special Operations forces there have made little secret of their desire to move into the tribal areas with or without Mr. Musharraf’s explicit approval. In the administration, there has been discussion of whether Mr. Bush should give orders to allow them more latitude. Mr. Musharraf has explicitly rejected that, and within days after Mr. McConnell and General Hayden’s departure, he told a Singapore newspaper that any unilateral action by the United States would be regarded as an invasion. In Davos, he dismissed the idea that Americans could be effective in the tribal areas.

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the United States was willing to send combat troops to Pakistan to conduct joint operations against Al Qaeda and other militants if the Pakistani government asked for American help. Mr. Gates said that Pakistan had not requested American assistance, and that any American troops sent to Pakistan would likely be assigned solely to train Pakistani forces. The top American commander in the region, Adm. William J. Fallon, visited Pakistan last Tuesday to discuss counterterrorism issues with senior Pakistani officials, including General Kayani.

American and Pakistani spokesmen confirmed that the meetings between Mr. Musharraf and American intelligence officials took place, but they declined to offer any details. Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Mahmud Ali Durrani, said in an interview that the meetings were about “improving coordination, discussing the war on terror, and filling the gaps between intelligence and operations,” but he declined to provide details.

Last Tuesday, the State Department’s counterterrorism chief, Lt. Gen. Dell L. Dailey, echoed some of those concerns, telling reporters that there were gaps in what the United States knew about the threat in the tribal areas. “We don’t have enough information about what’s going on there,” said General Dailey, who retired from the Army with extensive experience in military Special Operations. “Not on Al Qaeda. Not on foreign fighters. Not on the Taliban.”

In dealing with the American requests, Mr. Musharraf is conducting a delicate balancing act. American officials contend that now, more than ever, he recognizes the need to step up the battle against extremists who are seeking to topple his government. But he also believes that if American forces are discovered operating in Pakistan, the backlash will be more than he can control, especially because the Taliban and Al Qaeda are trying to cast him as a pawn of Washington. One result appears to be a compromise: Mr. Musharraf is willing, they say, to accept training, equipment, and technical help, but has insisted that no Americans get involved in ground operations.

Pakistani officials insist they are taking the militant threat seriously and have completed major operations in the Swat Valley to drive out extremists. In the past few days, about 1,000 Pakistan Army troops and Frontier Corps paramilitary forces have also begun a three-pronged attack against the South Waziristan stronghold of Baitullah Mehsud, a militant leader with links to Al Qaeda who is the main suspect in the assassination of Ms. Bhutto.