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Washington - The US military is set to take on an expanded role in the fight against terrorism, the Washington Post said Sunday, quoting a Pentagon official.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has approved three planning documents, each running to over 100 pages, which provide, among other things, for the creation of special operations units outside of war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Washington Post reported.
The measures outlined also remove the onus on the Pentagon to obtain the go-ahead from US ambassadors before carrying out operations in the country they were posted in.
The US military has already stationed special operations units at US embassies in 20 countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America, where they are engaged in operational planning and intelligence gathering, according to the Washington Post.
In February, when the Pentagon published its four-year-report on security challenges in the 21st century, the military already announced it was building up the capacity of its special operations units.
The documents approved by Rumsfeld include commitments on priorities, financing and coordination.
Activities to be undertaken by the new units include searching for suspected terrorists, investigating terrorist networks and sealing off terrorist safe havens.
One of the three documents also outlines how a terrorist attack on targets within the United States could be prevented and how the military would react in the event of a terrorist attack.
© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
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