Saturday, August 19 2006 11:24 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: A series of planned terrorist attacks with links to Pakistan as well as a sharp rise in cross border Taliban attacks in Afghanistan have prompted renewed debate in the US defence establishment about Pakistan.

The sharply rising American casualty rate in Afghanistan in particular had increased scepticism among some American military officers about the Pakistani intelligence service's efforts to rein in the Taliban, the New York Times said Friday citing two people involved.

"There is an increasing view in the United States that Pakistan isn't very helpful," said one researcher involved in the debate within the US Defense department, referring to frustration among some officers.

"There are people who are really thinking twice about this relationship with Pakistan," he said.

The influential American daily quoted a Western diplomat in Pakistan as saying, "(President Pervez) Musharraf is in a weaker position than he has been in the past, no doubt about it," he asid.

The unnamed diplomat, added, "There are constraints on him."

But in Washington the official view remains strongly supportive, the Times said. Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, credited General Musharraf with having kept his promise to break with the Taliban and their Qaeda allies.

Although the Taliban have reorganized inside Pakistan, Boucher said, General Musharraf's government is trying to gain control of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

"They've closed some camps; they've outlawed some groups," he said in an interview with the daily.

"You have to understand how deeply rooted extremism is in Pakistan," he added.

"I think we've seen plenty. We certainly work with Musharraf," he said. The Times said there is another opinion: that five years after Sept. 11 and Washington's weariness in Afghanistan, Pakistan has no interest in completely quelling the Taliban. It would not be in General Musharraf's interest, the argument goes, to forever lose all political influence over Kabul.

"The Pakistanis saw their concessions as temporary," it cited Stephen P. Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, as arguing.

"They have permanent interests in Afghanistan and are waiting for the US to depart. Now that we are on our way out of Kabul, I can expect Islamabad to try to increase its support for its clients in Afghanistan," he said.