A media report says that US military has completed dry exercises for launching a unilateral strike inside Pakistan if a terrorist attack in America in the future is traced to that country. Pakistani newspaper 'Dawn' said in a dispatch from Washington that this trial exercise is a rehearsal of a military's combat skills without the use of<br/>live ammunition. <br/><br/>Quoting diplomatic sources, it said the trial run for a unilateral strike in Pakistan, however, did not involve US troops. Instead, it projected computer simulations of such an attack with an assessment of a possible counterattack and of the potential resistance US troops might face if they entered the Pakistani soil. The report quoted diplomatic sources as saying that the US had already informed Pakistan of its intention to conduct such an<br/>exercise before conducting the computer simulations.<br/><br/>It added that soon after the Mumbai attacks, the then Bush administration had planned live exercises close to the Pakistan border and conveyed its decision to Islamabad as well.<br/><br/>The US' decision forced the then National Security Adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani to fly to Washington for convincing the Americans that such exercises would not help the fight<br/>against terrorism.<br/><br/>However, the US abandoned its move to carry out such exercises after US military chief Admiral Mike Mullen got an assurance from his Pakistani counterpart Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani that Islamabad would do its best to prevent extremists from using its soil for attacking other countries.<br/><br/>A diplomatic source told the Dawn that it aims at convincing Pakistanis that now is the time to uproot extremists. A failure to do so may lead to an attack on the US soil, which, in turn, could lead to an American military strike inside Pakistan.