"Pak,Afghan govt fighting militants:US"-What next, Mr Bush??

The Bush administration has said US-led forces along with the Afghan and Pakistani governments are jointly "coordinating" to fight militants along the border areas of the two South Asian countries, even though incidents of misunderstanding occurs occasionally.

"We understand that we have the commitment from President (Pervez) Musharraf, as well as from President (Hamid) Karzai, to take actions to try and deal with the presence of militants along the border. We have, as you know, a trilateral coordinating mechanism between US and coalition and NATO forces and Afghanistan and Pakistan to try and deal with these issues," US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.

"But certainly there are incidents that occur in the course of fighting this war and fighting against the terrorist groups that are there that sometimes raise questions about where incidents took place or what the exact nature of these things were that happened," Casey said in response to a question about a recent incident in which US-led forces operating in Afghanistan killed militants inside Pakistan without the approval of Islamabad.

"Our military commanders on the ground as well as representatives of our governments there in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be discussing this issue and make sure that if there was confusion or was something that happened that was outside of approved channels or planning that we take corrective action," he said.

"It's important to the United States that there's a cooperative relationship between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States and other coalition forces," Casey said.