TWO of America’s key allies in the war on terrorism were locked in a bitter feud yesterday over accusations that Pakistan was not doing enough to root out al-Qaeda and Taleban forces based along its rugged border with Afghanistan.

Shortly after President Bush ended his tour of the region, where he attempted to rally his allies against resurgent Islamic militants, General Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, fell out spectacularly with Hamid Karzai, his Afghan counterpart.

The dispute took on greater significance as Pakistani forces engaged in a bloody battle against militants in the lawless Waziristan region, where 120 people have been killed in three days of fighting. Pakistan insisted that the action, which began with an attack against a suspected al-Qaeda hideout, was proof that the authorities were serious about fighting militant forces on their soil.

Kabul said that the violence proved that Pakistan did not control its side of the border. “I feel there is a very, very deliberate attempt to malign Pakistan by some agents, and President Karzai is totally oblivious of what is happening in his own country,” said General Musharraf. He accused Afghanistan’s “Ministry of Defence and intelligence set-up” of a conspiracy against Pakistan. “He better set that right,” he told CNN.

Senior American and Afghan officials in Kabul were unrepentant, however.

They repeated their strongly held conviction that al-Qaeda’s leadership, including Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, were in hiding on Pakistani territory.

They also charged that former remnants of the Taleban, ousted from power five years ago, had been able to reorganise in Pakistan and were launching regular operations across the border. In the latest attacks, one French officer was killed and five Canadian soldiers were injured in separate incidents in the Afghan border province of Kandahar.

Four Afghan security officers were killed by a roadside bomb in Helmand province, another border area, where British forces will be deployed this year. “We believe that the increase in terrorist activities in southern Afghanistan is directly linked to elements on Pakistani soil who receive support from circles there,” said Jawed Ludin, Mr Karzai’s chief of staff.

He accused the Pakistani security forces of allowing militants to operate openly in cities such as Quetta, Karachi and Peshawar, as well as the tribal territories. “We have evidence that suicide bombings, IEDs [roadside bombs] and other terrorist actions taking place in Afghanistan emanate from Pakistan and that some Pakistani circles actually provide support for these activities,” he told The Times.

The Bush Administration is eager to stay out of the fight and bury the differences between its two key allies in the region. Mr Bush praised General Musharraf during his visit to Islamabad at the weekend. But he also said that Pakistan needed to do more to combat militant groups. A senior US official in Kabul said that the Taleban had been allowed to reorganise. “The Taleban have licked their wounds and come back,” he said. “This is a very difficult issue for President Musharraf. He has to decide how far he can go. The Afghans believe that he could do a lot more. Others fear [that if he cracked down] President Musharraf could be toppled.”

Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have often been strained because of Kabul’s strong ties with India, Islamabad’s traditional rival.

Pakistan values its strategic relationship with Washington. It was furious that Mr Karzai raised his concerns about Pakistani shortcomings in the war on terrorism during Mr Bush’s visit last week. It was even more upset by evidence of strengthening ties between America and India.

General Musharraf was outraged when Kabul revealed the fact that it had passed an intelligence report to Islamabad last month, which gave the names and addresses of 150 suspected militant figures hiding in Pakistan. He said: “Two thirds of it is months old, and it is outdated, and there is nothing.”

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