WASHINGTON - The United States Sunday sparked heated verbal skirmishes by refusing to rule out military action against Al-Qaeda leaders sheltering inside Pakistan, one of its closest "war on terror" allies.
Senior US officials reiterated that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf remained a lynchpin of the campaign against terrorism.
But their comments signaled frustration over what US intelligence chiefs say is Al-Qaeda's resurgence in lawless parts of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan.
The US director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, said Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was alive and sheltering in the frontier zone, where pro-Taliban Pakistani tribal leaders hold sway.
"My personal view is that he's alive. I believe he is in the tribal region of Pakistan," he told NBC television.
A new report by the US intelligence community last week said that Al-Qaeda had regrouped in its Pakistani "safe haven" and was determined to inflict mass casualties through new attacks on the United States.
McConnell said that had been possible owing to a September peace accord between the Pakistani government and tribal leaders in the ill-governed border region, which the tribals scrapped a week ago.
Fighting along the rugged frontier has intensified amid a nationwide wave of Islamist bloodshed that has killed more than 200 people, sparked by the Pakistani army's storming of the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad this month.
"Instead of pushing Al-Qaeda out, they made a safe haven for training and recruiting. Al-Qaeda's been able to regain some of its momentum," McConnell said.
The administration's latest remarks sparked a curt response from Islamabad.
"Our stance is that Osama bin Laden is not present in Pakistan," Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao told AFP in the Pakistani capital. "If anyone has the information he should give it to us, so that we can apprehend him.
White House spokesman Tony Snow, when asked by reporters Thursday whether US forces could strike militants inside Pakistan, said: "We never rule out any options, including striking actionable targets."
White House Homeland Security Adviser Frances Townsend reaffirmed the point when asked Sunday on CNN whether the United States would use "direct military force" against Al-Qaeda or Taliban elements inside Pakistan.
"No question that we will use any instrument at our disposal to deal with the problem of Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri and Al-Qaeda," she said, referring to bin Laden's number two Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Pakistan has called such comments "irresponsible and dangerous." The army Sunday ruled out the possibility of joint operations with US forces to target extremists.
"Pakistani forces are quite capable of conducting operation(s) against militants on their territory and only they have the authority to do so," chief military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri told CNN that instead of intelligence estimates, the United States should give Islamabad "evidence, actionable intelligence" on the Al-Qaeda presence inside Pakistan.
"Let the United States provide us with actionable intelligence, and you will find that Pakistan will never be lacking," he said, attacking US media criticism "despite all the sacrifices that Pakistan has been making."
Both Townsend and McConnell said the United States stood by Musharraf after President George W. Bush, in his weekly radio address Saturday, expressed full US support for his efforts "to rid all of Pakistan of extremism."
Democrats agitating for an end to the Iraq war have accused Bush of making the United States more vulnerable to terrorism by neglecting the strengthening Al-Qaeda threat from Pakistan.
McConnell said that if Musharraf were forced from power by the Islamist violence and pro-democracy unrest sweeping Pakistan, that could have a "severe impact" on the US struggle against terrorism.
"But President Musharraf is one of our valued allies," he stressed.

07/22/2007 18:20 GMT