The Pentagon is promoting a global counter-terrorism plan that would allow Special Operations forces to enter a country to conduct military operations without explicit concurrence from the US ambassador there.

The plan would weaken the long-standing ``chief of mission'' authority under which the US ambassador, as the president's top representative in a foreign country, decides whether to grant entry to American government personnel based on political and diplomatic considerations.

The Special Operations missions envisioned in the plan would largely be secret, known to only a handful of officials in a foreign country - if any.

The change is included in a highly classified ``execute order'' - part of a broad strategy developed since September 11, 2001, to give the Special Operations Command new flexibility to track down and destroy terrorist networks worldwide.

``This is a military order on a global scale, something that hasn't existed since World War II,'' said a counter-terrorism official with lengthy experience in special operations.

The Pentagon sees the greater leeway as vital to enabling commando forces to launch operations quickly and stealthily against terrorist groups without often time-consuming inter-agency debate, said administration officials familiar with the plan.

In the Pentagon view, the campaign against terrorism requires similar freedom to prosecute as in Iraq, where the military coordinates with the US embassy but is not subject to traditional chief-of-mission authority.

The State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have fought the proposal, saying it would be dangerous to dilute the authority of the US ambassador and CIA station chief to oversee military and intelligence activities in other countries.

Over the past two years, the State Department has repeatedly blocked Pentagon efforts to send Special Operations forces into countries surreptitiously and without an ambassador's formal approval.

The State Department assigned counter-terrorism coordinator Cofer Black, who also led the CIA's counter-terrorism operations after September 11, as its point man to try to thwart the Pentagon's initiative. ``I gave Cofer specific instructions to dismount, kill the horses and fight on foot - this is not going to happen,'' said Richard Armitage, describing how as deputy secretary of state - a job he held until this month - he and others stopped six or seven Pentagon attempts to weaken the authority of the chief of mission.

In one instance, US commanders tried to dispatch Special Forces soldiers into Pakistan without gaining ambassadorial approval but were rebuffed by the State Department. The soldiers eventually entered Pakistan with proper clearance but were ordered out again by the ambassador for reckless behavior.

``We had SF [Special Forces] guys in civilian clothes running around a hotel with grenades in their pockets,'' said one person involved in the incident and who opposes the Pentagon's plan.

Other officials cited another case to illustrate their concern. In the past year, they said, a group of Delta Force soldiers left a bar in a Latin American country and shot an alleged assailant but did not inform the US embassy for days.

Debate over the issue reignited last month, as Armitage and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell departed and Condoleezza Rice prepared to replace him, an administration official said. When the Pentagon refused to change language in the execute order, that put the issue before Rice.

In the past week, however, she has made it clear that she intends to protect the existing chief-of-mission authority.

Some officials have viewed the debate as a test of how Rice will defend State Department views in bureaucratic infighting with the Pentagon.

The State Department's concerns are twofold: conducting military operations would be perilous without the broad purview of an ambassador, and it would set a precedent that other agencies could follow.

``The chief-of-mission authority is a pillar of presidential authority overseas,'' the administration official said. `When you start eroding that, it can have repercussions that are ... risky. Particularly, military action is one of the most important decisions a president makes.''

Ambassadors have full responsibility for supervising all US government employees in a country.

THE WASHINGTON POST