'US not allowed to attack Qaeda targets in Pak'

The Pakistani prime minister says his country is well equipped to tackle the issue on its own.

Pakistan would not permit US planes and forces to violate its airspace to attack Al Qaeda targets in the country, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has said.

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"We are very capable of tackling such activities ourselves. Our armed forces are well-equipped. We do not allow any country to violate our sovereignty. We are committed to fighting terrorism, but it has to be fought together," he said in an interview.

He, however, added that Pakistan was firmly committed to fight terrorism and underlined the need for striving collectively to make the world a safer place to live in.

US President George W Bush has said he would order military operations inside Pakistan if terror mastermind Osama bin Laden or other top terrorists were found to be hiding there.

Aziz said terrorism was not going to disappear overnight, but perhaps it "will induce all of us to look at the root causes of terrorism and address them so that we gradually eliminate this threat which knows no borders, is linked to no faith or geography and can affect anybody any time," he said.

On Afghan President Hamid Karzai's remarks on the whereabouts of bin Laden and Mullah Omar, the Prime Minister said no body knew where Osama was and that he could be anywhere. "We have no clue where he is. If he were ever in our territory and we found out, we would go after him".

Aziz rejected as "totally incorrect" the claim by an Afghan leader that Taliban leader Mullah Omar is in Quetta.