Rice instead called for cooperation between the two nations after Afghan President Hamid Karzai had angered Pakistan when he threatened cross-border action as a right of "self-defense" against Taliban forces.

"I think it's probably not wise to talk about Afghan cross-border operations," Rice said in the interview with CNN.

"I think it's better that Pakistan and Afghanistan cooperate on their respective sides of the border," she said.

"There are Taliban operating in Afghanistan who have to be defeated. And there are Taliban who are operating in Pakistan, and they have to be defeated, too.

"But I think it's probably better that the respective governments deal with their own problems."

Karzai sent relations between the two allies in the US-led "war on terror" plummeting to a new low a week ago when he said that his war-torn country would be justified in striking Taliban rebels based on Pakistani soil.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi condemned Karzai's "irresponsible, threatening" comments and said Pakistan would "defend its territorial sovereignty."

The volatile situation on the porous 1,500-mile (2,500-kilometer) border was highlighted last week when Pakistan accused "cowardly" US-led coalition forces of killing 11 Pakistani soldiers in an airstrike.

earlier related report
Pakistani rebels kill four Afghans in rocket attacks
Four civilians including two children were killed Sunday when militants from inside Pakistan fired rockets at NATO bases in eastern Afghanistan, the alliance force and police said.

Some 20 rockets slammed the area in two separate incidents, with five of them coming from inside Pakistan, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.

Afghanistan's defence ministry said in a statement 13 rockets were fired from across the border on NATO and Afghan army bases in Khost.

ISAF in a statement it "responded in self-defence" with artillery fire on the launch site, which it said was "located about 300 metres (985 feet) inside Pakistan."

The force also responded by artillery and an airstrike to an earlier rocket barrage fired from a location inside Afghanistan.

Islamabad was notified about the rebel attack on its bases, ISAF said.

"The Pakistan military was immediately notified when ISAF forces came under fire," it said.

The dead included two Afghan children, a doctor in the city's hospital said.

"Two dead children and ten people including women and children were admitted to our hospital," the doctor, Abdul Majid Mangal of Khost hospital, told AFP.

The attacks come days after President Hamid Karzai threatened to target insurgent leaders on the Pakistani side of the lawless tribal region where Afghan and NATO officials say Islamic militants maintain training camps.

"This is another reason why the international community must pressure Pakistan to stop militant activities within it's territory," Karzai's chief spokesman, Homayun Hamidzada, told AFP.

"President Karzai was right when saying those threatening the security of Afghans and the international forces must be dealt with by force in their hideouts, wherever they're," the spokesman added.

The Afghan defence ministry said that the army separately to ISAF's response returned artillery fire, targeting militants on the other side of the frontier.

"In response, the army fired... 28 artillery rounds into the launching site of the rockets in Pakistan. There were no reports of casualties yet," the ministry's spokesman, General Mohammad Zahir Azimi, said in a statement.

The latest attack came a day after another NATO military outpost and an Afghan army base came under rocket attack in the neighbouring Paktika province but there were no casualties.

In separate incidents linked to the Taliban insurgency a suspected would-be suicide bomber detonated himself up after a security guard fired at him in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday, a police commander said.

The bomber was trying to climb up a wall into the house of a pro-Kabul tribal chief, Mohammad Hussein Andiwal told AFP.

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