The Nato military alliance denied on Wednesday that it was massing troops on the Afghan side of the border with Pakistan but urged Islamabad to do more to stop militants taking refuge. "There is not, nor is there going to be, an incursion of Nato troops into Pakistan. There is no planning for that, there is no mandate for that, and there is no troop movement in that direction," a spokesman said in Brussels.
Pakistani tribal elders raised the alarm Tuesday over what they said was a build-up of hundreds of Nato-led troops on the Afghan side of the border. "There is no unusual military activity in that region," said the Nato spokesman, James Appathurai.
While he insisted that the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was not gathering at the border, he underlined that they did have permission to shoot into Pakistan if fired upon. "They have the right to fire back if they are fired upon, and there should be no doubt that they do it," he said.
ISAF, made up of some 53,000 troops drawn from around 40 nations, is trying to spread the influence of the weak centralised Afghan government across the country, but it is struggling to end a Taliban-led insurgency. "There is not enough pressure on militants in the frontier provinces in Pakistan and as a result they are using these areas as safe havens in which to rest, reconstitute and then launch attacks into Afghanistan," Appathurai said. "That is a concern for us," he said.