Pakistan has denied that the US has been given the right to pursue Taleban and al-Qaeda suspects fleeing across its border from Afghanistan.

Pakistan's Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told the BBC that American forces could not cross the border from Afghanistan in hot pursuit.

Anti-US sentiment runs strong in the Pakistani border regions

On Friday, US forces in Afghanistan said they have the right to pursue suspected enemy forces across the border into Pakistan if necessary and that Pakistan was aware of this.

Despite its firm resistance to the plan the Pakistani authorities did pledge that Islamabad would continue to support the US-led coalition in Afghanistan.

A US army spokesman at Bagram airbase, Major Stephen Clutter, had said American forces were not going to stop at the border when they were in hot pursuit of enemy forces.

Responding to the comments Mr Ahmed said: "I don't know why they made such a claim."

Border clash

The latest development came as reports emerged of a second clash on the Pakistan-Afghan border.

US and Afghan forces exchanged heavy machine-gun fire with Pakistani forces in the southern Waziristan area on Thursday, according to local officials on the Pakistani side.

In an earlier incident, the US military bombed a building near the border where a suspected militant had hidden after firing and wounding a US soldier.

Pakistan claims the building was on its side of the border, but the Americans claim it was on the Afghan side.

In March 2002, the previous commander of US armed forces in Afghanistan, Major General Frank Hagenbeck, warned that American troops would enter Pakistan to chase suspected enemy forces.

Major Cutter said US troops had not yet crossed the Pakistani border in the latest incidents, but Pakistan called this claim into question after the bombing on Sunday.

The idea of US troops infiltrating the border is very unpopular in Pakistan, especially in the area near the border where many of the people share close ethnic and cultural ties with the Afghans and sympathise with the Taleban.

In a separate development, the US military said an American soldier was wounded by a land mine in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday.

A statement issued from the US HQ at Bagram air base said he had stepped on the mine while on patrol near Khost, some 150 km south-east of Kabul.