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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is retaining a powerful but controversial weapon left over from the Bush administration’s war on terror: Predator missile strikes on Pakistan.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates signaled to senators Tuesday that missile strikes will continue. He did not directly refer to the Predator hunt-and-kill drone program but said the U.S. would continue to strike at al-Qaida inside Pakistan along its border with Afghanistan.

But senior Obama administration and Capitol Hill officials say the Predator strikes are effective, and there is no plan to discontinue the program.

The Predator attacks have strained U.S. relations with Pakistan, which has urged Obama to halt them.

Pakistan was struck last week by missiles that killed at least 22 people. The strike was part of a continuing wave of more than 30 missile attacks since August.

In testimony Tuesday to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gates said Obama and former President George W. Bush were twinned in their efforts to pursue al-Qaida.

"Both President Bush and President Obama have made clear that we will go after al-Qaida wherever al-Qaida is, and we will continue to pursue them," Gates said.

"Has that decision been transmitted to the Pakistan government?" the panel’s chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., asked.

"Yes, sir," Gates responded.

The U.S. rarely acknowledges such missile strikes, at least some of which are carried out with unmanned Predator drones, used by the Pentagon and CIA to hunt down and kill terrorists.

A senior Obama administration official told The Associated Press that the Predator program would remain, saying simply: "It works." The comments were made on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the program publicly.

On Capitol Hill, a senior official added: "The most accurate way of characterizing the policy is no operational policies have been changed at this point." The official also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

At the Pentagon, spokesman Bryan Whitman earlier this week said there is no military plan to drop the Predator program, which he called "a premium platform" and in "high demand."

White House spokesmen have declined to comment on Predator or whether it would continue over Pakistan.

Last week, Pakistan said civilians were killed along with eight suspected foreign militants, including an Egyptian al-Qaida operative, in twin strikes in the Waziristan region, long suspected as al-Qaida’s safe haven in Pakistan.

The CIA expects that every Predator strike will generate claims that civilians have been killed. A recently retired U.S. intelligence official said attempts to verify those claims with human sources on the ground usually takes up to three days.

Predators operated remotely by the military fire missiles on between 20 percent and 30 percent of their missions, one senior defense official told The Associated Press. The rest of the time, U.S. drones provide surveillance and other intelligence-gathering help, the official said.

Roger W. Cressey, a counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations, said Obama’s team is also seeking a broader strategy for combating al-Qaida in Pakistan. That would include getting better intelligence to isolate terrorists to attack to reduce civilian casualties, he said. It could also rely more heavily on Pakistani officials who may now be more aggressive against al-Qaida than in the past.

But for now, Cressey said, the Obama administration should continue with the Predator strikes on areas of Pakistan he said al-Qaida was using to stage attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan and to plan attacks on U.S. interests outside the region.

"You’ve got to do it for the short-term tactical urgency," Cressey said. "But you can’t stop there, and that’s what the administration is going to work on."

The Pentagon has stepped up the number of its around-the-clock Predator and other unmanned combat air patrols over Iraq and Afghanistan battlefronts from 24 in May to 33 now, according to senior defense officials.

Those numbers do not include the unmanned systems being operated by the CIA, which is believed to be responsible for most of the missile strikes in Pakistan.

Associated Press writers Pamela Hess and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

AP | LARA JAKES | Tuesday, January 27, 2009