"Things from the US side on the diplomatic front are not moving the way we initially expected them to move", noted a senior Pakistani official in Islamabad".

"It is unnatural to expect Pakistan Army to support a military action that may drive the Northern Alliance from their present hideouts in Panjshir Valley to the seat of power in Kabul", according to a ranking military source.

Informed officials have disclosed that President Gen Pervez Musharraf now desires that the US military action in the region should stay focussed at the elimination of terrorist camps inside Afghanistan and the forthcoming military campaign make no attempt to implant Northern Alliance-dominated choice over Afghanistan.

Authorities in Pakistan, however, would now need solid assurance from the US that it will not meddle in the internal politics of Afghanistan, particularly when it comes to demands from the Northern Alliance for complete military cover to its guerrilla push to capture Kabul.

"We don't know what the Americans want to achieve by making innocuous charitable organisations such Al-Rashid Trust a target of US-led international crackdown", said a Pakistani security official who claimed that Al-Rashid Trust was never found involved in any anti-US activity.

Such an observation is enough for Pakistani officials to fear that the US anti-terrorist campaign would ultimately demand of Pakistan to enforce effective ban on all Pakistan-based jehadi organisations. It would mean grave law and order situation in Pakistan and a major blow to Kashmiri freedom struggle.

The Al-Rashid Trust, though a charitable organisation that was arranging daily food for 125,000 people inside Afghanistan and was working on a huge bakery project aimed at supplying 300,000 breads daily to Afghanistan, is believed to be associated with Lashkar-e-Taiba -- one of the most potent jehadi organisations fighting Indian troops in Kashmir.

The Harkatul Mujahideen, the second Pakistani organisation to figure in the US list of targets, is only a four-year-old organisation, that had been founded when the US Department of State had declared its parent organisation Harkat-ul-Ansar, as a terrorist organisation and had demanded Pakistan to ban its activities.

Officials said Pakistan, like China and Russia, wants the US to take its matter to the Security Council for debate and a UN approval for its military action.

Addressing the UN General Assembly on Monday, the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had also desired that the US should give a "measured response" to the situation. Annan also made an implicit plea to the US to get the UN approval before launching any military action.

Since the beginning of negotiations with the US officials, Pakistan had an understanding that it would, hopefully, be cooperating with a US-led coalition that includes troops from Muslim countries in a military action that would carry an approval from the UN, knowledgeable officials said.