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KABUL (Reuters) -
U.S. defence chiefs visited Afghanistan and Pakistan on Tuesday amid growing fears that American-led forces are failing to crush a rising Taliban insurgency, and anger in Pakistan over U.S. cross-border raids.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates was in Kabul to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has condemned the killing of Afghan civilians by foreign troops hunting Taliban insurgents.
Karzai, however, backed last week's announcement that the United States would target militant havens in neighboring Pakistan. Such raids have triggered fury in Pakistan, with reports of civilian casualties and even of near-skirmishes between American and Pakistani troops.
Asked if Pakistani troops had been authorized to fire on U.S. soldiers if they staged more cross-border raids, Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari, told reporters in London: "I don't think there will be any more." He did not elaborate.
The top U.S. military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, landed in Pakistan to meet Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and the chief of army staff, General Ashfaq Kayani.
A senior U.S. military officer said: "The challenges posed by the safe havens in the Pakistan side of the border, in the border region, are a very serious challenge and he (Mullen) believes it to be a major security threat to coalition forces, to the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan for that matter.
"He regards it as an extremely complicated and difficult problem that has to be addressed."
Gates's visit came after a trip to Baghdad, where he handed over command of the war in Iraq to a new general charged with maintaining better security while U.S. troop numbers fall.
In Afghanistan, by contrast, the United States plans to send more troops to combat a resurgent, al Qaeda-backed Taliban. Violence this year is at its worst since the 2001 invasion by U.S.-led coalition forces, with some 3,000 people killed.
NATO's top commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Gen. David McKiernan, said as Gates flew in that he needed three brigades plus support units -- possibly around 15,000 troops -- in addition to other forces scheduled to arrive in coming months.
"We're in a pretty tough fight here ... and I think we're going to be here for a while, although I don't think the insurgency will ever win in Afghanistan," he told reporters traveling with Gates.
Some 33,000 U.S. personnel are among a total of nearly 71,000 foreign troops led by NATO and the American military.
CIVILIAN DEATHS
But Afghans have been angered by a spike in civilian deaths inflicted by international forces, and the Western-backed government has called for a review of foreign combat operations.
Nearly 1,500 Afghan civilians were killed in the first eight months of this year, many in attacks on schools, clinics and bazaars, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
The death toll, up 39 percent from the same period in 2007, includes 800 killings blamed on Taliban and other militants as well as 577 caused by Afghan forces and their U.S.-led allies.
Gates will be briefed on use of air power and see if more can be done to avoid civilian casualties, the Pentagon said.
But the Pentagon is worried that al Qaeda may be resurfacing in Afghanistan after losing ground in Iraq.
Mullen, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this month he was not convinced the United States was winning in Afghanistan, and that militant bases across the border in Pakistan would be targeted as a shift of strategy.
U.S. forces have launched missile strikes from unmanned drones and a raid in Pakistan by helicopter-borne U.S. commandos this month.
Pakistan's new government has committed itself to the U.S.-led campaign against Islamist militants, although it is deeply unpopular.
Pakistani planes bombed militant bases on Tuesday, killing 14 insurgents, while a suicide car-bomber attacked a security force camp killing three soldiers, military officials said.
But Islamabad objects to cross-border U.S. strikes and protested against the helicopter assault in South Waziristan this month. There have been five U.S. missile strikes in Pakistan in September, killing both militants and civilians.
A military spokesman, Major-General Athar Abbas, said that aggression across the border would be confronted: "If any incursion is made against our soldiers, our checkposts, then we reserve the right to defend them."
Pakistani security officials said on Monday that firing by Pakistani troops had forced two U.S. military helicopters to turn back to Afghanistan after they crossed into Pakistani territory. The U.S. and Pakistani militaries denied it.
