Peshawar: Former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld may not have been shy about projecting US military power but even he didn't dare send American troops into Pakistan's tribal lands to snatch or kill Al Qaida leaders.
But now Pakistanis fear the US presidential campaign has heated up the foreign policy debate over how to handle the Taliban and Al Qaida threat to a point where American leaders could throw caution to the wind by taking unilateral action.
"If this was a possibility in the past it's a high possibility now" said a senior security official in the northwestern city of Peshawar shuddering at the statements coming from the United States.

In 2005 Rumsfeld reportedly aborted a mission to eliminate Ayman Al Zawahri Al Qaida's second-in-command because it involved too many risks.


The risks today may be even greater with Pakistan going through a precarious transition to civilian-led democracy and tribesmen across the northwest reaching for their guns.
"If Americans hit the Pakistani side they will make more enemies for themselves" Ayaz Wazir a former Pakistani ambassador to Kabul said.
An American incursion would be a call to arms for tribesmen who had hitherto shunned the insurgency based in the ethnic Pashtun tribal belt straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and undermine the fledgling civilian coalition government.
Evident
In past week US impatience has been very evident. There is a perception that the Pakistan army reduced pressure on Taliban groups in the border areas as the new government tried to get tribal elders to persuade the militants to end their war.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has also cast accusations that members of Pakistan's security apparatus are playing a double-game by helping the Taliban insurgency in order to preserve leverage in southern Afghanistan for the day when Western governments pull their forces out.
Bush has said he is "troubled" by Al Qaida's presence in Pakistan and will discuss the matter with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani when they meet in Washington on July 28.
Analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi doubted whether the US would act too rashly. "If at all they decide to take action it will be very very limited but quite effective action."
But the sense of trepidation in Pakistan that the US might dispense with diplomatic niceties was reinforced by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's remarks.
"We cannot tolerate a terrorist sanctuary and as president I won't" Obama said in a major foreign policy speech.
"We must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act we will take out high level terrorist targets like Bin Laden if we have them in our sights."