WASHINGTON - President Bush held a meeting of his top foreign policy aides yesterday to discuss the crisis in Pakistan, as administration officials and others explored whether the assassination of Benazir Bhutto marks the beginning of a new Islamic extremist offensive that could spread beyond Pakistan and undermine the US war effort in neighboring Afghanistan.
US officials fear that a renewed campaign by Islamic militants aimed at the Pakistani government, and based along the border with Afghanistan, would complicate US policy in the region by effectively merging the six-year-old war in Afghanistan with Pakistan's growing turbulence.
"The fates of Afghanistan and Pakistan are inextricably tied," said J. Alexander Thier, a former United Nations official in Afghanistan who is now at the US Institute for Peace.
US military officers and other defense analysts do not anticipate an immediate impact on US operations in Afghanistan. But they are concerned that continued instability eventually will spill over and intensify the fighting in Afghanistan.
Unrest in Pakistan and increasing fuel prices have already boosted the cost of food in Afghanistan, making it more likely that hungry Afghans will be lured by payments from the Taliban to participate in attacks, a US Army officer in Afghanistan said.
In a secure videoconference yesterday linking officials in Washington, Islamabad, and Crawford, Texas, Bush received briefings from CIA Director Michael Hayden and Anne Patterson, US ambassador to Pakistan, said National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
Bush then discussed Bhutto's assassination and American efforts to stabilize Pakistan with his top foreign policy advisers, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and national security adviser Stephen Hadley, as well as Admiral William Fallon of Central Command and Marine General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
US intelligence and Defense Department sources said there is increasing evidence that the assassination of Bhutto was carried out by Al Qaeda or its allies inside Pakistan. The intelligence officials said that in recent weeks their colleagues had passed along warnings to the Pakistani government that Al Qaeda-related groups were planning suicide attacks on Pakistani politicians.
The US and Pakistani governments are focusing on Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Taliban Movement of Pakistan, as a possible suspect.
Mehsud told the BBC earlier this month that the Pakistani government's actions forced him to react with a "defensive jihad."
