New York: There has been a marked decline in Taliban attacks on US forces in Afghanistan and the Pakistani army is using American intelligence about militants "safe havens" inside its restive tribal regions to flush them out.

US officials believe Afghanistan is deteriorating because of insurgents based in these "safe havens", a Wall Street Journal report said.

Maj Gen Jeffrey Schloesser, the top US commander in eastern Afghanistan, told the paper that the number of insurgents crossing into Afghanistan from Pakistan has begun to decrease, reducing a major cause of instability in Afghanistan.

US and Afghan forces, which were hit by up to 20 rockets a day over the summer, are now hit by two or three, he added.

Senior American military officers were quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying that US is allowing Pakistani officers to view video feeds from unmanned drones flying over Pakistan s ungoverned border regions.

The US is also granting access to American intercepts of militant cellular and satellite phone calls inside Pakistan.

The Pakistani military, it said, is using the US intelligence to carry out strikes against extremists in its Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which are widely thought to harbour senior members of al Qaeda, the Taliban and other armed Islamist groups.

The US-Pakistan cooperation, says the Journal, is a contrast from earlier last year when Islamabad, reacting to public anger over US ground and air strikes inside the country, withheld military cooperation.

The once-solid relationship between Washington and Islamabad deteriorated over the summer after an American missile killed 11 Pakistani soldiers, it noted.
Source : PTI