Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. forces hunting Osama bin Laden and other terrorists in Afghanistan will cross into Pakistan if necessary, President George W. Bush said, as the leaders of the two neighboring countries traded blame over the insurgency.

``We would take the action necessary to bring them to justice,'' Bush said in an interview with Cable News Network yesterday. When asked if he would order U.S. troops into Pakistan to capture or kill bin Laden, if intelligence indicated he was hiding there, Bush responded: ``Absolutely.''

Bin Laden has been on the run since a U.S.-led coalition ousted the Islamist Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001. Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who sheltered the al-Qaeda chief and hosted his training camps, has also evaded capture.

The guerrilla war being waged by Taliban rebels is a source of tension between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. The pair clashed at the United Nations General Assembly in New York yesterday, each saying the other must do more to tackle the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Bush will hold talks with Musharraf and Karzai in Washington on Sept. 27 to discuss the joint fight against terrorism, White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

``I view President Musharraf as somebody who would like to bring al-Qaeda to justice,'' Bush told CNN, when asked whether the Pakistani leader was doing enough to track down terrorists in tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. ``There's no question there is a kind of a hostile territory in the remote regions of Pakistan that makes it easier for somebody to hide.''

Pakistan Operation

Musharraf, who has faced opposition from Islamist groups for supporting the U.S.-led war on terrorism, said his government would oppose any U.S. action in Pakistan.

`` We wouldn't like to allow that at all,'' he told reporters in New York. ``We will do it ourselves.''

A January 13 U.S. air strike on suspected al-Qaeda figures in a village in northwestern Pakistan killed 18 people and sparked protests against the U.S. across the country.

Musharraf and Karzai have been at odds over efforts to dislodge Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters hiding along the mountainous border between the two countries.

``We must look beyond Afghanistan to the sources of terrorism,'' Karzai said in a speech to the General Assembly yesterday, without mentioning Pakistan. ``We must destroy terrorism sanctuaries beyond Afghanistan, dismantle the elaborate networks in the region that recruit, indoctrinate, train, finance and deploy terrorists.''

Military Strategy

Musharraf took issue with Karzai's comments and said his government is pursuing a ``massive, multi-pronged'' political and military strategy to tackle insurgents.

``The problem lies in Afghanistan,'' he said, adding that Omar was sheltering in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province. ``Military action is required against him and his commanders,'' Musharraf added.

The Pakistani president defended an accord signed this month with pro-Taliban tribal leaders in the North Waziristan region to expel foreign al-Qaeda-linked fighters, in return for scaling back the number of Pakistani troops in the area.

``We need to take the influential tribal elders on our side,'' Musharraf said yesterday, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan. ``We have to tackle Talibanization,'' he said, adding it was important to ``wean away the population from getting on their side.''

NATO Forces

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is fighting a Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan's southern provinces. Military commanders have said the resistance is stronger than expected and have appealed for 2,500 reinforcements to boost the existing 20,000-person International Security Assistance Force.

Poland will send 950 extra soldiers in February and Canada, which has about 2,300 soldiers in Afghanistan, will immediately send an additional 200 personnel, including engineers, a tank squadron and an infantry company. NATO foreign ministers meet in New York today to discuss further reinforcements.

A two-week ISAF offensive Kandahar province killed more than 1,000 Taliban fighters, U.S. Marine General James Jones, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, said yesterday, according to a transcript of his briefing. He estimated the Taliban force was around 3,000 fighters. ISAF previously said the offensive, codenamed Operation Medusa, killed about 500 rebels.

`Heavy Price'

Jones said the Taliban had decided ``to engage NATO in perhaps its first real operational ground test in a long, long time'' upon the arrival in July of 6,000 alliance troops in an area about 30 miles west of Kandahar. The Taliban forces opted ``to stand and fight in a fairly conventional, linear sense, and they paid a very heavy price for it,'' Jones said.

NATO forces are now ``in the consolidation phase, and we are going to start bringing aid and reconstruction to that region,'' Jones said.

ISAF troops are now hunting Taliban insurgents in western Farah province in an offensive dubbed Operation Wyconda Pincer, NATO said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ed Johnson in Sydney at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net; Bill Varner in United Nations at wvarner@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 21, 2006 10:24 EDT