President Bush said Monday he is confident that with the right intelligence U.S. and Pakistan governments can take out al Qaida leaders, and he declined to rule out consulting first with Pakistan before ordering U.S. forces to act.
"With real actionable intelligence, we will get the job done," Bush said.
He was asked whether he would wait on permission from Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf before committing the U.S. military to move on "actionable intelligence" on the whereabouts of terrorist leaders in Pakistan. He did not answer directly.
Bush was at the presidential retreat at Camp David for two days of meetings with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The two held talks on a rash of crises confronting Afghanistan: civilian killings, a booming drug trade and the brazen resurgence of the Taliban.
Karzai said that he and Musharraf, who are meeting this week in the Afghan capital of Kabul, would discuss how to tackle the problem of lawlessness and extremist hideouts along Pakistan's border area with his country.
Bush and Karzai put a positive spin on Afghanistan's progress since the 2001 defeat of the repressive Taliban, but they stressed that serious problems remain.
"There is still work to be done, don't get me wrong," Bush said. "But progress is being made, Mr. President, and we're proud of you."
Karzai acknowledged that a resurgent Taliban is a problem in Afghanistan. But he said that it is not a threat to his government. Karzai is Afghanistan's first democratically elected president.
"We have a long journey ahead of us but what we have traveled so far has given us greater hope for a better future for a better life," Karzai said at a joint news conference here with Bush.
