Pakistan on Sunday rejected a U.S. media report on U.S. covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan as "baseless".
The report, on New York Times Sunday edition, said that the U.S. President George Bush's senior national security advisers were debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
The debate was a response to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda and the Taliban were intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani government.
The New York Times said in its report that Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a number of Bush's top national security advisers met Friday at the White House to discuss the proposal, which is part of a broad reassessment of the U.S. strategy after the assassination of former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto 10 days ago.
There was also talk of how to handle the period from now to the Feb. 18 elections in Pakistan, and the aftermath of those elections, the report said.
A local TV channel quoted Pakistani military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad as saying that Pakistani security forces were capable of maintaining peace in the country. He described the report as baseless.
Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman Muhammad Sadiq said that he is not aware of any meeting mentioned by the New York Times. He said that writers sometimes based their stories on speculations, with unnamed sources.
He added that none of the speculative stories needed reaction.
Source:Xinhua
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