Drone attacks inside Pak having effect: US

The US drone attacks inside Pakistan were "having an effect" but Washington and Islamabad will decide whether to continue the strikes, which have been unpopular in the country, a top American official has said.
 
"They (drone attacks) are having an effect (but) whether they continue or not will be up to the Pakistani government and our government working side by side in a collaborative way," said US national security adviser James Jones.
 
"The attacks have done a couple of things: One, they have been targeted very specifically against al-Qaeda. Two, they produce very low collateral damage," Jones told the Pakistani daily Dawn.
 
This was the first time a senior US official has spoken on record about drone attacks.
 
Jones said that Washington’s relation with Islamabad are "in a restart mode…we are having very intensive dialogues. We’re building trust and confidence between the armed forces."

Assistant secretary of state Richard Boucher said the US had no plans to send American troops inside Pakistani territory. He said Pakistanis were operating on their side of the border.
 
"We operate differently on the other side of the border," he added.

The US, Boucher said, understood the Pakistanis did not want American forces inside their country. "We’ll respect that, but at the same time we want to make sure we are supporting them properly," he said.
 
Special envoy Richard Holbrooke called the fight to bring stability to Pakistan’s border areas “the most daunting challenge" of the new regional plan because Islamabad had imposed a "red line".
 
He said: “The red line is unambiguous and stated publicly by the Pakistani government – no foreign troops on our soil."