Besides, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has for several years fired missiles at militants inside Pakistan from remotely piloted Predator aircraft, the paper noted.

But the new orders for the military’s Special Operations forces relax firm restrictions on conducting raids on the soil of “an important ally” without its permission.

A top Pakistani army general has said that his forces would not tolerate American incursions like the one that took place last week and that the army would defend the country’s sovereignty “at all costs.”

It is unclear, the report said, precisely what legal authority, the United States has invoked to conduct even limited ground raids in a friendly country.

A second senior American official told the Times that the Pakistani government had privately assented to the general concept of limited ground assaults by Special Operations forces against significant militant targets.

The official did not say which members of the Pakistani government gave their approval, the paper said. Any new ground operations in Pakistan, the report said, raise the prospect of American forces being killed or captured in the restive tribal areas and a propaganda coup for al-Qaeda.

PAK-BUSH 3LST Last week’s raid also presents a major test for Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zardari, who supports more aggressive action by his army against the militants but cannot risk being viewed as an American lap dog, as was his predecessor, Pervez Musharraf, the paper said.

The new orders, the Times added, were issued after months of debate inside the Bush administration about whether to authorise a ground campaign inside Pakistan. The debate, first reported by The New York Times in late June.

... contd.