(CNSNews.com) – Pakistan has no agreement with the United States permitting missile attacks on Pakistani soil, the country’s prime minister told lawmakers in a bid to quell strong suspicions that a surge of attacks – more than 20 in three months – had been quietly authorized.
 
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said in Islamabad Saturday that the government would not tolerate such attacks, which were adding to Pakistan’s problems.
 
The issue was back in the spotlight at the weekend after a missile, presumably fired from an unmanned Predator drone, hit a target in the tribal belt’s North Waziristan district, killing five people. One of them, according to Pakistani officials, was a fugitive British Muslim wanted in connection with a 2006 plot to blow up transatlantic airliners.
 
The wanted man, Rashid Rauf, had been on the run since escaping from Pakistani police last December while facing an extradition process in Islamabad.
 
Saturday’s missile strike came three days after an earlier one which, for the first time, hit a target not in the lawless Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) but in what is known as a “settled” area of Pakistan.
 
Last Wednesday’s strike inside the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) killed an Arab al-Qaeda terrorist, identified by security officials as Abdullah Azam al-Saudi and reported to have held a key position coordinating between militant leaders on both sides of the border.
 
The regions adjoining the long and porous border are hideouts for Taliban and other fighters accused of launching attacks against U.S., NATO and Afghan forces inside Afghanistan. They also are believed to be the likeliest location of top al-Qaeda fugitives, including Osama bin Laden.
 
Each time a drone-originated missile attack has occurred close to the Afghan border since mid-August, Pakistan’s government has protested – sometimes formally to U.S. diplomats. Pakistani officials typically say the attacks are undermining the government and making it harder to defend its cooperation in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorists.
 
But critics suspect the protests are contrived simply to calm national anger.
 
Qazi Hussain Ahmad, head of the Jamaat-e-Islami political party, delivered a sermon Friday in which he slammed the government both for its army operations against militants in the border areas but also for what he called its connivance with American “aggression.”
 
Summoning U.S. envoys to the Foreign Office to protest missile strikes was “mere drama,” he said, suggesting that the U.S. had given Pakistan the go-ahead to make the protests, for show.
 
It was clear that the government was not really angry, since it continued to allow the supply of weapons to NATO forces in Afghanistan to travel through Pakistan, Ahmad said.
 
Instead, he warned that Pakistani people would themselves act to cut the supply lines between the port of Karachi and the Afghan border.
 
Ahmad ridiculed Gilani’s claim that the government was unable to stop the U.S. strikes, accusing him and President Asif Ali Zardari of displaying a “slavish mentality” towards Washington.
 
In the face of such an admission of defeat, the government should resign and hold fresh elections to put in place leaders who could protect national security and sovereignty, he said.
 
Zardari on Sunday again called the drone attacks inside Pakistani territory counter-productive, according to an official statement issued after a meeting also involving Gilani, the defense and foreign ministers, security advisors and head of the ISI military intelligence service.
 
Zardari said the government was coming under pressure to respond aggressively to the attacks.
 
The government planned to work out “a new strategy” to deal with the strikes, the statement said, without elaborating.
 
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said Sunday that up to 4,000 of the extra American troops due to arrive in Afghanistan in January would be deployed in the east of the country near the border with Pakistan.
 
“We recognize that there are certain lines or avenues that the insurgents come through [from Pakistan] and we are focusing our efforts on those,” spokesman Col. Greg Julian told reporters in Kabul.
 
The alleged plot in which Rashid Rauf was a suspect involved plans to smuggle liquid bomb ingredients onto several flights headed for the U.S. The terrorists would have prepared the explosive mixture in the air, and then detonated the devices to  bring down the planes.
 
Exposure of the plot in 2006 resulted in severe disruption at airports in Britain and then around the world, and led to restrictions on liquids being taken onto flights. A British court convicted three men last year of conspiracy to murder.
 
Rauf, a British national of Pakistan origin, was arrested in Pakistan in 2006. While facing a British request for his extradition for an unrelated 2002 murder case, he escaped from custody in odd circumstances last December.
 
Police reportedly allowed his uncle to drive him back to prison after a court appearance, Pakistan media reported at the time. Accompanied by two police escorts, the vehicle stopped first for a take away meal and then at a mosque for prayer. During the prayers, Rauf and the uncle disappeared.