A handsome man of medium build, Gen Ralston has become increasingly familiar to Indian interlocutors, having accompanied US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott to India in July and being closely involved in talks between the two sides. In fact, Gen Ralston was at the ambassador's residence again exactly a week later, attending another dinner hosted last Saturday by the ambassador for the Indian and US delegations participating in the fourth round of talks.

But in between those two `guest' appearances, Gen Ralston -- unbeknown to most people including many in the US government itself -- surfaced in Peshawar, Pakistan, on a secret mission that American officials say is indicative of the role Washington is called to play because of the tensions between India and Pakistan.

As details of the US air strike against the terrorist camps in Afghanistan begin to trickle out, it now transpires that Gen Ralston was entrusted with the job of going to Pakistan to warn the Nawaz Sharief government of the military strike -- not before and not after, but just as it was going to happen. Flying in a US Air Force plane that made the non-stop journey in 15 hours with two mid-air refuellings, Gen Ralston's mission was aimed at preventing the Pakistani government from mistakenly assuming the missiles are coming from India, informed sources told The Indian Express.

``It is just a small illustration of the new kind of situation after nuclear weapons have been introduced into the sub-continent,'' a State Department official said.

Incidentally, Indian officials said they had no prior information about the military strikes. For several weeks now after the back-to-back nuclear tests by the two countries, US officials have spoken of a doomsday scenario based on misunderstandings between the two countries.

While New Delhi and Islamabad themselves have been sanguine about the kind of command and control structure they have, primitive though they may be, Washington has been paranoid and distraught over the possibility of a mishap based on wrong or faulty intelligence. That fear was vividly illustrated, especially where Pakistan is concerned, when Islamabad literally went ballistic just before its own nuclear tests, feverishly claiming that Indian and Israeli planes were about to bomb its nuclear installations. Islamabad's alarums caused consternation in Washington, which immediately conveyed to Pakistan that it's suspicion was unwarranted and its intelligence faulty.

But the advisory was not enough to prevent Pakistan from conducting its `deterrent' nuclear test, although the suspicion was strong in many quarters that Islamabad was using the attack bogey to justify going overtly nuclear. Much later, the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Thomas Simons, went as far as saying a country which took national security decisions based on faulty intelligence inputs could not be seen as a responsible nuclear power.

In the case of the Afghan attack, US military officials are believed to have popped up near the Afghan border not just to warn the Pakistanis, but also to provide what experts call `terminal guidance' to the missiles as they homed in on the terrorist camps near Khost close to Afghanistan's border with Pakistan. American spy planes like the P-3 Orion may also have been used to provide mid-course guidance to the missiles.

Launched from a US flotilla in the Arabian sea close to Pakistan's territorial waters, the 73 Tomahawk cruise missiles -- a favourite of the US forces now -- would have skimmed over more than 1,000 kms of Pakistani landscape before slamming into the camps. Although launched at about 10 p.m. local time, the drone and flare of the missile would have been apparent to people below.

According to experts, the US planned the attack having pinpointed the exact location of Osama bin Laden to within ten metres by the communications signal of his mobile satellite phone. (The Russians had killed Chechen separatist leader Dudayev using similar methods). But at least one account from Pakistan said bin Laden had gotten rid of his phone fearing such an attack. The former Pakistani army chief Mirza Afzal Beg, has claimed that he had advised people in Kabul not to use wireless communication with bin laden after anticipating such a strike.

TOMAHAWKS V/S FIGHTER PILOTS

The Tomahawk cruise missile is a hot new favourite in the US forces. Having first been used in the 1991 Gulf War -- and panned because of its poor performance -- the latest versions of the missile are said to be deadly accurate with a highly refined Circular Error Probability (CEP). So much so, only one of the 73 missiles launched at the Afghan terrorist camp is said to have gone off target (a dud which has since been found in Pakistan, much to US consternation about its technology being filched).

But in the Pentagon, the Tomahawk is an object of veneration and admiration, as evident from a poster on the ``Top Ten Reasons Why Tomahawks Are Better Than Fighter Pilots.''

10. Tomahawks make lousy Prisoners of War.

9. Tomahawks don't `sleep till they are hungry and eat till they are tired.'

8. You don't need to outfit a Tomahawk with a Rolex and leather jacket to do the job.

7. Tomahawks don't complain

6. Tomahawks don't need eight hours of sleep before a mission

5. Tomahawks don't require costly flight pay bonuses

4. Tomahawks don't make excuses when they miss a target

3. Tomahawks don't bore you to death with stories when the mission is over

2. Tomahawks always follow the flight plan and never hot-dog it

and the No. 1 reason why cruise missiles are better than attack pilots

1. You'd let your sister date a Tomahawk.