ISLAMABAD: In discussions between American and Pakistani officials, Islamabad has demanded a variety of restrictions in exchange for the use of a base in the country, the New York Times reported on Monday, saying the Pakistan government had effectively required that it be able to sign off on any targets that either the US CIA spy agency or its military would want to hit inside Afghanistan.

The scramble for bases illustrates how US officials still lack a long-term plan to address security in a country where they have spent trillions of dollars and lost more than 2,400 troops over nearly two decades. At least 150 Afghan troops were killed or injured in the last 24 hours in a surge of attacks by Taliban militants as foreign forces withdraw, senior government officials said on Monday. Fighting is now raging in 26 of the country’s 34 provinces.

CIA director William J. Burns made an unannounced visit in recent weeks to Islamabad, Pakistan, to meet with the Pakistani military and the head of the directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s military intelligence agency, and discuss counterterrorism operations, the Times said.

“Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has had frequent calls with the Pakistani military chief about getting the country’s help for future US operations in Afghanistan, according to American officials familiar with the conversations,” the newspaper said.

“Burns did not bring up the base issue during his trip to Pakistan, according to people briefed on the meeting; the visit focused on broader counterterrorism cooperation between the two countries. At least some of Mr. Austin’s discussions have been more direct, according to people briefed on them.”

A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment when asked by the New York Times about Burns’s travel to Pakistan.

“Although some American officials believe Pakistan wants to allow US access to a base as long as it can control how it is used, public opinion in the country has been strongly against any renewed presence by the United States,” the NYT said.

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, told lawmakers last month that the government would not allow the US military to return to the country’s air bases.

“Forget the past, but I want to tell the Pakistanis that no US base will be allowed by Prime Minister Imran Khan so long he is in power,” Qureshi said.

“Some American officials said that negotiations with Pakistan had reached an impasse for now,” the newspaper said. “Others have said the option remains on the table and a deal is possible.”

The CIA used Pakistan’s Shamsi air base to carry out hundreds of drone strikes during a surge that began in 2008 and lasted during the early years of the President Barack Obama administration. The strikes focused primarily on suspected Qaeda operatives in Pakistan’s mountainous tribal areas, but they also crossed the border into Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s government refused to publicly acknowledge that it was allowing the CIA operations, and in late 2011 it decided to halt the drone operations after a series of high-profile events that fractured relations with the United States. These included the arrest of a CIA contractor in Lahore for a deadly shooting, the secret American commando mission in Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden and an American-led NATO airstrike on the Afghan border in November 2011 that killed dozens of Pakistani soldiers.