Officer says Pakistan aids US fire over border

WASHINGTON -- In a new advance in cooperation with US forces in Afghanistan, Pakistani troops have recently helped direct US artillery fire into Pakistan, a senior US officer said yesterday.

''That's a huge step forward," said Army Colonel Cardon B. Crawford, the director of operations for the US military command in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has been a key US ally in the war on terrorism, including the hunt for Taliban and Al Qaeda figures who have found refuge in the border region with Afghanistan. But US combat troops have not operated inside Pakistan, and Crawford indicated that the Pakistani collaboration on US artillery strikes into Pakistan from Afghanistan was new.

''The Pakistanis have adjusted our artillery fire into the Pakistani side of the border to go after anti-coalition militia," he told reporters inWashington.

Crawford offered limited details about the artillery operations, but stressed that the Pakistani cooperation has been valuable, since there are no US troops on that side of the border.

''A howitzer will shoot, let's say five, six, 10 kilometers," he said, or up to six miles. ''There has to be somebody out there who says, 'Here's the target.' And when the round lands, he'll say ''go left, go right, go up, go down."

Lieutenant Colonel Pamela Keeton, spokeswoman for the US military command in Afghanistan, said later that the incident happened in early November and was mentioned in a US public statement Nov. 6.

Keeton said militants were firing mortars or other projectiles at the Afghan town of Shkin in Paktika Province from a spot near the Pakistani town of Wana when Pakistani soldiers used US-supplied radios to call in adjustments to artillery fire from American forces on the Afghan side of the border.

Keeton said this is the only time that US forces have fired artillery into Pakistani territory.

Citing another example of increased cooperation with Pakistan's military, Crawford said US forces are training Pakistani troops in how to execute air assault operations. He said the training was being done inside Pakistan but he was not more specific.

Crawford also said ''there's a huge effort" to capture or kill Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding in or near the Afghan-Pakistan border region. Crawford would not say whether US forces have come close to finding bin Laden, but he said Al Qaeda has ''no effective presence" inside Afghanistan now.

He also said there are signs of divisions within the Taliban leadership, and he suggested that the Afghan government is preparing a new plan that would be designed to ''widen the fissures" within the Taliban leadership. He declined to provide details.

Some Taliban leaders, he said, ''are probably willing -- literally and figuratively -- to come in out of the cold" and become part of the Afghan political process.