Bitter over troops death, Pakistan may spurn US training

NEW YORK-Anger in Pakistan over last week's lethal US air strikes on its soil threatens a joint effort to train a paramilitary force to fight tribal militants, The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing two unnamed Pakistani officials said.
In a dispatch from Islamabad, the newspaper said that the Pakistani military is threatening to postpone or cancel the $400million US programme to train the Frontier Corps. It said some Pakistani officials are convinced that the US troops deliberately fired on their military, killing 11 men from the FC the Americans want to train. But, according to The Times, the Americans deny that conclusion.
The training programme is intended to combat militancy by fielding the FC, from among the tribes that live in the border areas. Ending or delaying the programme, which is already under way, would deny the US what little leverage it has in the tribal areas to combat a rising number of cross-border attacks from Pakistan into Afghanistan against American and NATO forces this year, the paper said.
The US military said that the air strikes had been carried out in self-defence against militants who had attacked American forces in Afghanistan and then fled into Pakistan. But the Pakistanis continue to dispute the American account.
'This is the first time the United States has deliberately targeted cooperating Pakistani forces', Jehangir Karamat, a former chief of the Pakistani Army and a former Ambassador to the United States, was quoted as saying.
'There has been no statement by the United States that this was a 'friendly fire' and that the intention was not to target the Pakistani forces'.
'The recriminations have exposed the underlying mistrust in the alliance, which has been held together in large part by the personal relationship between President Pervez Musharraf and President Bush', The Times said, citing Pakistani officials and diplomats.