Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Thursday denied Islamabad has a secret deal with America allowing the attacks, as some analysts have speculated, and said he expected them to stop when President-elect Barack Obama takes over in January.

Nation faces financial ruin and military defeat

President Zardari expressed his disapproval of US drone attacks on Pakistani areas along the Afghan border and urged Washington to instead provide the Predator technology to Pakistan to enhance its ability to fight terrorism.

The Kristol revelation on the surface is staggering yet not a surprise to those who have long suspected that the US presence in Afghanistan constitutes a Trojan horse for a more insidious plan the US has for Pakistan. Some may find it surprising that the US now believes Pakistan to be more challenging than Iraq where the US has 150,000 troops, spent almost a trillion dollars and has incurred over 4,000 fatalities.

The United States and Pakistan reached tacit agreement in September on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets in rugged western Pakistan, according to senior officials in both countries.

Civilian deaths remain a problem, Zardari said. "If the damage is women and children, then the sensitivity of its effect increases," he said. The U.S. "point of view," he said, is that the attacks are "good for everybody. Our point of view is that it is not good for our position of winning the hearts and minds of people."

Pakistan temporarily barred oil tankers and container trucks from a key passageway to Afghanistan, threatening a critical supply route for U.S. and NATO troops on Sunday and raising more fears about security in the militant-plagued border region.

A pre-dawn missile strike by a US drone on a suspected militant hideout in Pakistan’s volatile north Waziristan tribal region has killed at least 12 people.

Gunmen kidnapped an Iranian diplomat after killing his guard Thursday in Peshawar, a day after an American aid worker was shot dead in the city in volatile northwest Pakistan.

Militants in Pakistan have looted 12 trucks carrying supplies for Western forces in Afghanistan, officials say.

The U.S. military has conducted nearly a dozen secret operations against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups in Syria, Pakistan and other countries since 2004, The New York Times reported Sunday night.

A suspected US drone has launched a missile strike into northwest Pakistan, reportedly killing at least 10 people.

The attack on Friday targeted a town in North Waziristan, a tribal region on the Afghan border, security officials said.

Pakistan is fighting the war on terror because it faces an existential threat from the situation in the Tribal Areas, US Central Command chief General David Petraeus said while commenting on his interaction with Pakistani leaders during a visit that ended on Tuesday.

A spokesman from the Pakistani embassy denied tonight a report that his government has a “secret understanding” with the United States on the contentious issue of unilateral US air strikes launched into Pakistani territory. The report stems from comments in an article by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, who said “Pakistan’s leaders publicly decry U.S. attacks, and the United States, with a wink and a nudge to its ally, keeps on attacking.”

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari told the head of the U.S. Central Command, General David Petraeus, and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher that attacks on his country by American drone aircraft are ``counterproductive'' and must stop.

A parallel new Bush doctrine is emerging, in the last days of the soon-to-be-ancien regime, and it needs to be strangled in its crib. Like the original Bush doctrine -- the one that Sarah Palin couldn't name, which called for preventive military action against emerging threats -- this one also casts international law aside by insisting that the United States has an inherent right to cross international borders in "hot pursuit" of anyone it doesn't like.

They're already applying it to Pakistan, and this week Syria was the target. Is Iran next?

Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Parvez Kayani is being rushed to Turkey this evening for a meeting with Turkish government officials hot on the heels of Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani’s talks with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. The meeting appears to be the first step toward Turkish involvement in pressing the United States to halt its air strikes against targets inside Pakistan.

Pakistani officials warned Gen. David Petraeus on Monday that frequent missile strikes on militant targets in Pakistan fan anti-American sentiment in an Islamic country vital to the struggle against terrorism.

British Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw on Friday opposed repeated United States incursions into Pakistan’s territory, and urged Washington to respect the sovereignty and integrity of its vital allies.

Pakistani and Afghan political and tribal leaders meeting in Islamabad Tuesday have agreed to seek talks with Taliban insurgents in a bid to limit violence along their shared border. The announcement came after a two-day meeting described as a mini-jirga in the Pakistani capital. VOA's Barry Newhouse reports from Islamabad.

The two-day "mini-jirga" in Islamabad ended with pledges to create new committees in both countries that will try to establish contact with Taliban groups.

A marked uptick in frequency of the missile attacks has badly strained America's seven-year alliance with Pakistan, where rising violence is exacerbating economic problems gnawing at the nuclear-armed Islamic republic's stability.

Pakistan’s foreign currency reserves have been falling at a rate of nearly $1 billion a month, and the State Bank of Pakistan has barely enough to cover six weeks of imports.

Total reserves, including those held by commercial banks, stood at $7.75 billion on October 11, of which the central bank’s accounted for $4.34 billion.

Pakistan needs $10 billion to $15 billion of support from foreign lenders to cover its current account financing gap and undertake economic adjustments over the next two years, Adviser on Finance Shaukat Tareen said on Tuesday.

With Pakistan’s dwindling security situation made all the more pressing by its rapidly collapsing economy, both Pakistan’s opposition and members of its ruling coalition have become increasingly discontented with the current government’s security policies, largely the same ones pursued by ousted President Pervez Musharraf. The US has applauded the government’s current policies, and has cautioned them against pursuing the peace talks offered by the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan.

A suspected US missile strike has killed at least eight students at a religious school in north-western Pakistan, witnesses say.

The school, in North Waziristan, is close to the residence of a fugitive Taleban leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani, witnesses told the BBC Urdu Service.

A suspected US air strike killed nine people at a religious school in north-west Pakistan, intelligence officials said today.

It was claimed the school, on the outskirts of Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan region, had links to the Taliban.

The US says it has discussed NPT issues with China and Pakistan amid reports that Beijing is aiding Islamabad in building new nuclear reactors.

Pakistan was seeking the aid from China, an important ally, as it faces the possibility of defaulting on its current account payments.

Accepting a rescue package from the fund would be seen as humiliating for Mr. Zardari’s government, which took office this year.

An I.M.F.-backed plan would require Pakistan’s government to cut spending and raise taxes, among other measures, which could hurt the poor, officials said.

China and Pakistan on Wednesday signed more than 10 deals ranging from trade and minerals to agriculture and satellites.

He also proposed the two nations create new areas and explore new ways of cooperation. "China and Pakistan should vigorously boost border trade so as to bring more substantive benefits to their citizens."

Mr Zardari's four-day visit to Beijing is at the invitation of Chinese President, Hu Jintao.

Pakistan and China are traditional allies with long-standing economic and commercial relations.

Beijing is also Islamabad's biggest weapons supplier and is helping Pakistan to build a nuclear power plant - the second such project between them.

Pakistan's president warns the US on strikes against Pakistan, saying the violation of the country's border would not be tolerated.

During a meeting with visiting British Permanent Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs Peter Ricketts and Permanent Under Secretary of Home Office, David Normington, Zardari said Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected.

British officials covered up evidence that a Taliban commander killed by special forces in Helmand last year was in fact a Pakistani military officer, according to highly placed Afghan officials.

Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves are so low that the country can only afford one month of imports and faces possible bankruptcy.

It has been claimed here that the United States is entitled under international law to take military action in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas since they no longer lie under the sovereign control of the Pakistani state.

A US missile strike destroyed a house in a North Waziristan village today, killing at least 21 people according to a senior Pakistani official. Of the 21, a local official said 16 of them foreigners. He also added that the house belonged to two Afghan refugees who settled in the area after the 2001 US invasion.

If the United States forces in Afghanistan continue to suffer casualties inflicted by insurgents crossing over from Pakistan, the next administration, whether Republican or Democratic, will come under tremendous public pressure to make direct strikes on Pakistani targets, according to three South Asia experts

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari secretly met the director of America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Michael Hayden on his recent US visit, a media report said on Monday.

A regular columnist of the New York Times reported that Zardari has replaced heads of three directorates of the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI.

Pakistan named a new head of its main intelligence service, a change sure to be scrutinized by American officials who have questioned the powerful spy agency's loyalties in the war on terror.

It is public that Bush signed a special order authorising attacks in sovereign Pakistan. It is a gross violation of international law, UN laws, EU laws and understandings between US, Pakistan, Afghanistan and NATO member states backed by EU. It is therefore time that Islamabad registers a case against Bush in International Court of Justice, for authorising killing of innocent Pakistanis. It is war crime.

The Pentagon has ordered that raids on suspected terrorist targets within Pakistan be stepped up to pressurise al-Qaeda leaders and distract them from preparing attacks on American targets elsewhere.

Pakistan is ready to work with China to enhance bilateral strategic co-operation, Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Kayani said on Friday.

U.S. special operations forces have paused ground operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas, but military and civilian government officials differ over why the cross-border raids have been halted.

Pentagon says US has the right to hit targets inside Pakistan and that crossing the border in pursuit of terrorists doesn't violate the UN Charter.

Extremist forces threaten the very existence of Pakistan, the incoming US commander in the region warned Thursday, as tension mounted between NATO and Pakistani forces on the Afghan frontier.

Pakistani forces may or may not have shot at American troops last week. They may or may not have taken down a U.S. drone yesterday. But, according to one U.S. Marine lieutenant colonel, Pakistani military forces almost certainly "flew repeated helicopter missions into Afghanistan to resupply the Taliban during a fierce battle in June 2007."

Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence agency has been assisting radical Islamic forces in Afghanistan for decades. But did this incident really go down the way Nash said it did?

Pakistan warned U.S. troops not to intrude on its territory Friday, after the two anti-terror allies traded fire along the volatile border with Afghanistan.

So the US claims to have recovered its lost drone, and Pakistan also has recovered another drone. Whose is it? Pakistani TV showed footage of the wreckage, and the footage is apparently consistent with an American Predator Drone. But the part shown has been sold to other countries, so its also possible the drone belonged to the British or some other nation.

The United States has a right to act against terrorist targets in Pakistan, but the new civilian government in Islamabad has to be ‘a willing partner’, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday.

UN charter: Gates said that in his view, the United Nations charter allowed the US to act in self-defence against international terrorists in Pakistan if the government was unable, or unwilling to deal with them.

Pakistani authorities are trying to "solve the riddle" of US Marines and their mysterious steel cases that were shifted to the Marriott Hotel four days before it was razed in the worst terrorist attack in the federal capital, a media report on Tuesday said.

"The authorities want to ascertain if it was a routine exercise or part of some special mission that does not have the approval of the government of Pakistan," The News said.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Thursday that the United States is "ready, able and willing" to send troops to Pakistan if the government of the South Asian nation is interested.

U.S. military officials have told CNN that commanders are reviewing a classified planning order that could result in troops going to Pakistan for training purposes if Pakistan's government

The cost of any new training program would be in addition to the $750 million in security and economic aide the United States provides to the country.

Pakistan is being punished for refusing to allow U.S. military boots on Pakistani soil, for the bombings in India, for the July 7 attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, and for the failures of the American military in Afghanistan. The attack is a clear message to the Pakistani ruling elite: We will bring the war to your home.

The Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari, will plead with President George Bush today to change a policy which is being blamed for one of his country's worst terrorist atrocities.

"We hope the US will change policy because this is what is needed," said Pakistan's ambassador to the UK, Wajid Shamsul Hassan, after 53 people were killed and more than 250 injured in the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.

"We hope the US will change policy because this is what is needed," said Pakistan's ambassador to the UK, Wajid Shamsul Hassan, after 53 people were killed and more than 250 injured in the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. He argued that the Bush administration's decision to allow cross-border incursions from Afghanistan into Pakistan, including by ground forces on at least one occasion, had been counterproductive "because they are not killing high-value targets, they are killing civilians".

According to military sources, during his five-day official tour to China he would meet with his Chinese counterpart People Liberation Army Chief Gen Chen Bingde in which matters related to enhancing Pak-China Defense and military cooperation would be discussed. Besides this Gen Kayani would also meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao who is also the commander in chief of the PLA.

Witnessed by many, including a PPP MNA and his friends, a US embassy truckload of steel boxes was unloaded and shifted inside the Marriott Hotel on the same night when Admiral Mike Mullen met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and others in Islamabad.

Gunmen kidnapped Afghanistan's top diplomat to Pakistan on Monday after killing his driver, underscoring worsening security in the nuclear-armed country two days after a suicide bomber killed 53 people.

The bombing, the most brazen yet app