Their report concluded that more than a third of U.S. funds provided Pakistan since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were subject to accounting problems, including duplication and possible fraud.

The Pentagon paid $20 million for army road construction and $15 million to build bunkers, but there is no evidence that the roads or bunkers were ever constructed, the Government Accountability Office said.

Islamabad also billed Washington $200 million for an air defense radar system that may not have met the U.S. condition that reimbursement cover costs of supporting U.S. military operations against terrorism.

"For a large number of claims, Defense did not obtain sufficient documentation from Pakistan to verify that claimed costs were incremental, actually incurred or correctly calculated," the report concluded.

"It seems as though the Pakistani military went on a spending spree with American taxpayers' wallets and no one bothered to investigate the charges," said Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. "How hard would it have been to confirm that a road we paid $15 million for was ever built?"

Pakistan is the largest recipient of Coalition Support Funds - part of a counterterrorism effort the Bush administration launched in 2001 after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

The South Asian country has received $5.5 billion of the $7 billion distributed to 27 countries under this program during the last six years.

"Apparently, the Bush administration cares so little about the hunt for Osama bin Laden that it is barely paying attention to how the Pakistani military is carrying out the fight," Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said.

In a response included in the report, the Defense Department said the GAO failed to adequately acknowledge Pakistan's "significant contribution" to fighting terrorism.

Sharif Supporters Stage Protests

Supporters of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif burned effigies yesterday as they protested a provincial court ruling that bars him from running in this week's parliamentary by-elections.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told Parliament that the government would ask the Supreme Court to block Sharif's disqualification and postpone the vote in Sharif's district scheduled for tomorrow.

The court ruling has exacerbated tensions between Sharif's party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, and its larger partner in the ruling coalition, the Pakistan People's Party.

The two parties have been bickering over the restoration of judges ousted by President Pervez Musharraf last year. That has undermined their young government, whose cooperation is considered key to the U.S.-led war on terror.

A successful move by the government to clear Sharif's path could cool the tensions between the parties.

- Associated Press