Firing: US-Pak warmth gets a little too hot

State Department Director of Policy Planning Richard Haass is here on January 6 to meet Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra as well as Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal on Iraq, besides attending a CII summit in Hyderabad. New Delhi’s policy of ‘‘passive acquiescence’’ is said to have been received favourably by world leaders.

But with a US soldier having been shot by a Pakistani guard last weekend, the US bombing a religious school across the border in Pakistan, and yesterday’s exchange of heavy machine-gun fire by the two in the South Waziristan tribal agency, matters between allies US and Pakistan seem to be coming to a head.

While Musharraf protested against both the bombing as well as the new registration procedures for Pakistani nationals in the US and Powell assured him that US forces would be very careful in this regard in the future, a US military spokeswoman in Bagram, Afghanistan was not so circumspect.

According to the Pakistani daily Dawn, Captalayne Cramer delivered a terse message to a Pakistani colonel who formed part of a joint team, saying that ‘‘enough was enough’’ and that the US would not tolerate any firing from the Pakistani side.

She told the Pakistani colonel that the message was from ‘‘the very top,’’ that US central command chief Gen Tommy Franks himself wanted it to be conveyed to his counterpart Gen Aziz. The Pakistani colonel and the US spokeswoman have reportedly not been on speaking terms after their showdown.

Pakistan officials refuted US warnings on ‘‘hot pursuit’’ saying ‘‘Pakistan is not afghanistan.’’ Hot pursuit would provoke Pakistani firing and the Americans would have to face the consequences of such a misadventure, they said.

Powell and Sinha, meanwhile, also spoke about the crisis in North Korea. New Delhi believes that Pyongyang’s weapons of mass destruction have been given by Pakistan in what amounts to a grand bargain in exchange for North Korean missiles.