MIRANSHAH, 23 July 2007 — Pakistani troops killed 19 militants in clashes near the Afghan border as US said it was considering using force against Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Islamabad warned against any such move.

Six rebels died in a gunbattle yesterday after they ambushed a troop convoy with a roadside bomb in the tribal agency of North Waziristan, and 11 soldiers were wounded later in two separate bomb blasts, security officials said.

Troops also killed 13 pro-Taleban fighters in overnight clashes after the rebels attacked several military checkpoints in the lawless region, where authorities were trying to revive a 10-month-old peace deal.

In the first attack on Saturday night in North Waziristan, chief military spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad said four “miscreants” were killed when they attacked a checkpoint and security forces returned fire.

“After some time they attacked five other security posts in the area and nine other militants were killed,” Arshad told AFP. “The miscreants have fled with the bodies, but security forces have arrested seven people.” In another attack yesterday, seven soldiers were wounded when a roadside improvised explosive device (IED) hit their convoy as it passed a village six kilometers east of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.

Just after the blast, militants fired on the troops from nearby hills and the soldiers returned fire, with security forces also using artillery and, local sources said, helicopter gunships.

Another IED blast later wounded four soldiers in the Khar Qamar area, when their convoy was approaching Datta Khel village, a security official said.

Authorities yesterday also found the body of a pro-government tribal elder dumped, along with his severed head, by a road in the neighboring tribal district of South Waziristan, security officials said.

Amid the violence, a delegation of elders and religious leaders drawn from Pakistan’s seven tribal districts bordering Afghanistan pushed on with negotiations in a bid to salvage a collapsed peace accord in North Waziristan.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri said Islamabad would oppose any move by the NATO-led forces stationed in Afghanistan to enter Pakistani territory in the pursuit of militants. “We have done enough and are doing a lot to stop militants sneaking into Pakistan or to cross over into Afghanistan.”

Speaking to journalists in Lahore he said Pakistan was fully cooperating with the NATO-led forces and Afghanistan through trilateral Joint Military Commission.

“We have lost so many security personnel and the Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants are now on the run,” he said.

Appearing on CNN’s “Late Edition,” also from Lahore, Kasuri criticized talk of US forces attacking Al-Qaeda on Pakistani territory, warning that any incursion would alienate opinion in the predominantly Muslim US ally against terrorism.

“We are committed to controlling terrorism, and people in Pakistan get very upset when despite all the sacrifices that Pakistan has been making you get all these criticisms” in the press, he said in the interview.

“What I don’t like is the tone that I am now hearing and that I am now reading in the American media,” said Kasuri.

President Bush’s Homeland Security Adviser Frances Fragos Townsend said in Washington, the US was committed first and foremost to working with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in his efforts to control militants in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. But she indicated the US was ready to take additional measures. “Just because we don’t speak about things publicly doesn’t mean we’re not doing things you talk about,” Townsend said, when asked in a broadcast interview why the US does not conduct special operations and other measures to cripple Al-Qaeda. “Job No. 1 is to protect the American people. There are no options off the table,” she said.

The national intelligence director, Mike McConnell, said he believed that Osama Bin Laden was living in the tribal, border region of Pakistan. Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Sherpao denied Bin Laden was in Pakistan’s territory.

McConnell said Musharraf’s attempt at a political solution to peace in the region had backfired by giving Al-Qaeda a place and time to regroup.

“Al-Qaeda has been able to regain some of its momentum,” McConnell said.