Islamabad: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf said US troops are not welcome to join the fight against al-Qaeda on Pakistani soil, despite the growing threat from Islamic extremists.
Musharraf warned in an interview published Friday that Pakistan would resist any unilateral US military action against militants sheltering in its lawless, tribal regions near the Afghan border.
''I challenge anybody coming into our mountains,'' he told Singapore's The Straits Times newspaper. ''They would regret that day.''
The Pakistan-Afghan border has long been considered a likely hiding place for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, as well as a staging ground for Taliban militants planning attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan.
The New York Times reported last week that Washington was considering expanding the authority of the CIA and the US military to launch covert operations within the tribal regions.
State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Friday that anything the U.S. has done, and anything it will do, has been ''in full cooperation'' with Pakistan's government.
Musharraf said US troops would ''certainly'' be considered invaders if they set foot in the tribal regions without his permission.
Musharraf also said he would resign if opposition parties tried to impeach him after parliamentary elections set for February 18.
Pakistan's opposition is expected to make gains in the elections amid widespread sympathy for opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated December 27. Opposition groups say they would try to oust the president, although it is still doubtful they could muster the two-thirds parliamentary majority required.
Musharraf - who seized power in a military coup eight years ago - is seen as vulnerable to impeachment over his decision to fire Supreme Court judges and suspend the constitution last year.
On Thursday, a suicide bombing by a suspected Islamic extremist in the eastern city of Lahore killed 24 people in the first major attack since Bhutto's assassination. All but three of the dead in the bombing outside the High Court were police officers.
Investigators reconstructed the face of the suicide bomber and took prints off his severed fingers on Friday as they probed the attack, which exposed Pakistan's growing vulnerability to Islamic extremists ahead of the elections.
The bombing was the latest in a series of at least 20 suicide attacks in the country over the past three months that have killed about 400 people, many of them security officers.
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