The Bush administration is ready to send a small contingent of United States troops into Pakistan to fight insurgency if Islamabad asks for assistance, Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said.
"We remain ready, willing and able to assist the Pakistanis and to partner with them to provide additional training, to conduct joint operations, should they desire to do so," Gates, flanked by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, said at a news conference.
The top Pentagon official said that Pakistan has not requested any additional assistance as it battles an increasingly active insurgency, adding the US will respect the Musharraf government's decision on how to tackle the problem.
"We're not aware of any proposals that the Pakistanis have made to us at this point....at this point it's their nickel, and we await proposals or suggestions from them," the Defence Secretary said.
"I think that the emergence of this fairly considerable security challenge in Pakistan has really been brought home to the Pakistani government relatively recently and particularly with the tragic assassination of Bhutto. So I think it's not particularly surprising that they have not fully thought through exactly how they intend to proceed," Gates added.
The top US commander in the region, Admiral William Fallon, was in Pakistan this week. He met senior Pakistani officials, including new army chief General Ashfaq Kayani. Admiral Fallon had told reporters that Pakistani officials were now more willing to seek US assistance.
Gates said any US military operation to target al Qaeda bases in Pakistan's tribal areas will involve only a small number of troops.
"You're not talking about significant numbers of US troops if you're talking about going after al Qaeda in the border area... in my way of thinking, we're talking about a very small number of troops, should that happen. And it's clearly a pretty remote area. But, again, the Pakistani government has to be the judge of this," he said.
Admiral Mullen said that talks with Pakistan on possible US assistance were going on and that "If asked to assist, I think we could do a lot".
But Gates placed the al Qaeda threat in a larger perspective over and beyond what is taking place in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"We are all concerned about the re-establishment of al-Qaeda safe havens in the border area. I think it would be unrealistic to assume that all of the planning that they're doing is focused strictly on Pakistan. So I think that that is a continuing threat to Europe as well as to us," he said.