Neither the White House nor the State Department expressed regret over Friday's suspected CIA attempt to kill Osama bin Laden's deputy that ended in the deaths of 18 people and triggered street protests around Pakistan.

"The United States clearly values innocent human life," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters. "And that is why we're fighting the war on terror."

Officials refused to confirm the United States had carried out the strike on a village with a missile-firing Predator drone. But White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the assault on Al-Qaeda terrorists would continue.

"Al-Qaeda continues to seek to do harm to the American people. There are leaders that we continue to pursue, and we will bring them to justice," McClellan said.

"The American people expect us to do so, and that's what this president is committed to doing," he said.

Prodded on whether it might be beneficial for the administration of President George W. Bush to express regret if a US airstrike accidentally hit civilians, McClellan would not give any ground.

"I think you've heard our comments about matters of that nature in the past," he said. "If I have anything additional to add, I will."

Officials in the tribal zone where the missile landed said the strike was aimed at foreign militants invited to a dinner and that up to five of them were killed -- the first such confirmation by Pakistan.

Pakistan lodged an official protest with the US embassy on Saturday and thousands of people chanting "Down with America" took to the streets in angry protests in major cities the following day.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said Tuesday that Islamabad could not accept operations such as the reported strike on Friday and he vowed to bring up the matter during his upcoming talks in Washington.

But US officials stressed Pakistan was cooperating in the anti-terror effort and played down the impact on US-Pakistani relations of the raid said to have targeted Al-Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

"What I can tell you is that in our interactions with Pakistani authorities that we continue to have very good meetings on a variety of topics, including fighting the war on terrorism," McCormack said.

"I would emphasize and underline to you that the atmosphere of cooperation and good relations continues throughout all of these meetings."

A senior State Department official, who asked not to be named, was asked whether the harsh comments by the Pakistani prime minister were posturing for domestic consumption only. "I'll let you do the analysis," he said.

McCormack expressed little alarm over the street protests. "My impression is that they are not of the magnitude that we have seen in the past in Pakistan," he said.

The incident posed one of the first real tests for the Bush administration's highly publicized public diplomacy offensive towards the Muslim world piloted by Karen Hughes, an undersecretary of state and a close Bush associate.

But McCormack would not say whether any investigation of Friday's attack had been launched for possible targeting mistakes or intelligence failures. He would not confirm Washington had received an official protest.

The spokesman reported no contacts by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with the Pakistanis. Nicholas Burns, the State Department's number three, was traveling to Pakistan, but there was no word whether he would discuss the raid.

"All we can do in this case it to continue to reach out to the Pakistani people, help them understand what it is that we are doing in fighting the war on terrorism and also to underline for them what a good friend America is," McCormack said.

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