Afghan president urges his NATO allies to change their strategy in the war on terror and target extremist hideouts in neighboring Pakistan.

Hamid Karzai reiterated earlier allegations that the Taliban and al-Qaeda militants are operating training camps and launching attacks from the lawless tribal region in Pakistan, which borders on Afghanistan.

"It's still not too late. If the international community focuses on the terrorists' bases, hideouts and places where they are being trained and financed the problem is going to be solved," he told journalists in his fortified palace in Kabul, adding: "Our call on friendly Pakistan, its intelligence agency and military is to abandon the hope to have a puppet government in Afghanistan."

However, Karzai's call for military action in Pakistan echoes the views of top NATO military leaders, who say that militants train, recruit and rearm in Pakistan's tribal areas.

"There certainly is a level of Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) complicity in the militant areas in Pakistan and organizations such as the Taliban," the four star US General David D. McKiernan said in a weekend interview in Kabul.

Karzai and his Western allies have stepped up criticism in recent months of Pakistan's military-run intelligence service accusing it of directly supporting militants of being behind the deadly July bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

Senior US intelligence and military aides want US President George W. Bush to give American soldiers greater flexibility to operate against al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters who cross the border from Pakistan to conduct attacks inside Afghanistan.

But any such move would be controversial, because of Pakistani opposition to US incursions into its territory.

JR/RA