Pakistan's foreign ministry has not taken seriously, the letter or confessional statement of Ajmal Amir, the terrorist captured in the Mumbai attacks.
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.
A a Wall Street Journal report expresses the view that US officials believe Afghanistan is deteriorating because of insurgents based in these "safe havens".
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.
US officials attributed the declines to American missile strikes on insurgent targets inside Pakistan and the coordinated military campaign known as Operation Lionheart, which involves US moves against militants in the Kunar region of Afghanistan and a large Pakistani campaign in the extremist stronghold of Bajaur, the Journal report said.
"The operations in Bajaur and the Predator strikes in Waziristan have caused a disruption across the border," Gen Schloesser said.
The general's comments mark one of the first times a senior US official has publicly confirmed the use of US missile strikes in Pakistan, the paper noted.
Pakistan's chief military spokesman, Maj Gen Athar Abbas was quoted as saying that "Operation Lionheart" had succeeded in pushing many militants out of Bajaur, which had long been the main extremist stronghold in northwestern Pakistan.
US officials, the paper said, credit the turnaround in part to Gen Ashfaq Kiyani, the head of Pakistan's armed forces, who has come to believe that militants pose an extreme threat.
Gen Kiyani replaced the head of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, which has long maintained covert ties to the Taliban and other armed groups, and has devoted significant military resources towards the fight in the border regions.
Pakistan's fragile civilian government has also taken a harder line toward the militants than many US officials expected, it added.
In an interview to the Journal, William Wood, the US ambassador in Kabul, said Pakistan was "unquestionably taking more effective action" against militants. "The only reason I wouldn't refer to it as a bright spot is that the problem is such a big one," he said.
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