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As Pakistan, and what to do about it, continues to feature strongly in the 2008 presidential primary campaign, the country's prime minister reiterated Sunday that Pakistan would not allow foreign forces to act against terrorists on its soil.

"We will do whatever it takes to prevent terrorism. But we cannot and will not accept the presence of any foreign troops in Pakistan," Shaukat Aziz told al-Arabia television, reacting to comments by U.S. presidential candidates about using military force inside Pakistan.

"We believe in intelligence-sharing, cooperation and coordination with friendly countries that are committed to fighting this scourge," he said.

Islamabad protested earlier after Sen. Barack Obama, a Democratic aspirant for the party's 2008 presidential nomination, said that if elected president he might order unilateral military strikes against al-Qaeda terrorists inside Pakistan if President Pervez Musharraf's government did not act.

In a phone call to Musharraf, President Bush called Obama's comment "unsavory," according to the Pakistani foreign ministry.

Nonetheless, leading Republican Party candidates during a debate in Iowa Sunday did not altogether rule out military action inside Pakistan.

"I would take that action if I thought there was no other way to crush al-Qaeda, no other way to crush the Taliban, and no other way to be able to capture [Osama] bin Laden," said former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. "I think Pakistan has, unfortunately, not been making the efforts that they should be making," he said.

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Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said the U.S. should retain military options but should also keep "quiet" about them.

"It's wrong for a person running for the president of the United States to get on TV and say, 'We're going to go into your country unilaterally,'" he said, referring to Obama.

Islamabad has been unhappy about the criticism.

"As the election campaign in America is heating up we would not like American candidates to fight their elections and contest elections at our expense," Foreign Minister Khusheed Kasuri said in an AP Television interview.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afghan plans to open a debate in parliament on Monday that will include discussion of the recent criticism of Pakistan by U.S. presidential hopefuls.

The Pakistan Senate's foreign relations committee has also adopted a resolution demanding that Pakistan cease all cooperation in the campaign against terrorism in the event of any unprovoked U.S. military action across the country's border.

Deepening crisis

Pakistan has become an increasingly central foreign policy issue in the 2008 debate since a recently released National Intelligence Estimate said that al-Qaeda has "a safe haven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas."

An eruption of violence and terror attacks in the remote border has cost more than 350 lives over the past month. The situation deteriorated when tribal leaders pulled out of a 2006 controversial peace agreement with the government to protest the army's raid on a radical-held mosque in Islamabad last month.

Musharraf, meanwhile, also is facing his biggest domestic political crisis since seizing power in a 1999 military coup. The Supreme Court recently ordered the reinstatement of the country's chief justice, whom Musharraf had removed for "misuse of authority," and opposition political parties have stepped up demands for a return to democratic rule.

Against that backdrop, many analysts argue that any unilateral U.S. action inside Pakistan would likely bring down Musharraf's government.

"The fall of Musharraf's government might well lead to a takeover by pro-U.S. elements of the Pakistani military," Heritage Foundation senior fellow Peter Brookes said in a recent analysis. "But other possible outcomes are extremely unpleasant, including the ascendance of Islamist factions," he added.

Brookes said if Islamabad fell to extremists the problem of terrorist safe havens would be exacerbated, and Pakistan's nuclear weapons arsenal would fall into the wrong hands, with potentially "nightmarish" consequences.

"The best route for dealing with Pakistan is mild pressure and cooperation -- not threats," he said. "Musharraf hasn't been a perfect ally, but for the moment he's our best bet for fighting terrorism, especially al-Qaeda, in Pakistan."

Ved Prakash Malik, president of the Observer Research Foundation's Institute of Security Studies in New Delhi, believes Musharraf and the Pakistani military will react in one of three possible ways to the current crisis.

Pakistan may return to a more open political system, if Musharraf allows free and fair elections and partially withdraws the army from politics, allowing it a continued role through the National Security Council. Leading opposition political figures may even allow Musharraf, without his uniform, to remain president and run for re-election later, said Malik, a retired general and former chief of India's army staff.

A second scenario would be the imposition of martial law, further alienating civil society which already sees Musharraf as responsible for the political mess, he said.

And the third possibility, Malik said, was an in-house army shuffle that would remove Musharraf from power. The new army chief would face the choice of continuing military rule, or -- more likely -- would form an interim government with civilian participation for with a view to holding elections and restoring democracy, he said.

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