WASHINGTON – Pakistani forces Thursday fired at U.S. helicopters and traded shots with U.S. troops and Afghan police on the Afghan-Pakistan border in the latest blow to cooperation between Washington and Islamabad, U.S. officials said. Neither side reported casualties in the incident, which occurred when the helicopters crossed into the Pakistani tribal agency of North Waziristan, the Pakistan army said. In New York, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari said that Pakistani soldiers only fired ‘flares’ to demarcate the mountainous border for the helicopter pilots. ‘Sometimes the border in so mixed that they don’t realize they have crossed the border,’ he told reporters as he sat down to talks with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Rice agreed that the border ‘is very, very unclear.’ According to the U.S. military, Pakistani troops in a hillside border checkpoint fired at two U.S. OH-58 Kiowa reconnaissance helicopters providing cover for Afghan police and U.S. military trainers patrolling inside the Tanai district of Khost Province. The Afghan police and U.S. soldiers ‘observed fire coming from the Pakistani checkpoint at the helicopters. Our guys then fired suppressive rounds into the ground down the hill from the checkpoint,’ said Adm. Gregory Smith, […]