Pakistani activists shout anti-US slogans as they burn a US flag during a protest in Lahore.
There’s no war going on between the U.S. and Pakistan yet, but recent exchanges involving American and Pakistani forces along the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier are sounding like a sputtering fuse that’s growing ever shorter. The latest series of "pops" occurred Thursday, when Pakistani forces fired on a pair of U.S. OH-58 scout helicopters buzzing along the border, and U.S. and Pakistani ground troops then exchanged fire. Pakistani officials insisted the choppers had crossed into their airspace, but U.S. officials said the incident occurred more than a mile inside Afghanistan — and the mountainous region is so poorly mapped that both sides likely believe what they are saying. No one was injured.
In New York, Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zardari, said his country’s forces had fired only warning flares at the choppers. "Sometimes the border is so mixed that they don’t realize they have crossed the border," he told reporters before a session with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Source: www.time.com
