Pakistan blasts US raid

ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan—Pakistan criticized the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden as an “unauthorized unilateral action,” laying bare the strains the operation has put on an already rocky alliance.

In a statement, the Pakistani government said “this event of unauthorized unilateral action cannot be taken as a rule.”

“The government of Pakistan further affirms that such an event shall not serve as a future precedent for any state, including the United States,” it said, calling such actions a “threat to international peace and security.”

The statement may be partly motivated by domestic concerns. The government and Army have come under criticism following the raid by those who have accused the government of allowing Washington to violate the country’s sovereignty.

Islamabad has also been angered at the suspicions it had been sheltering Bin Laden.

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Leon Panetta said on Tuesday that US officials ruled out informing Islamabad about a planned raid against Bin Laden’s compound as they feared their Pakistani counterparts might alert the al-Qaida chief.

Panetta told Time magazine that “it was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission: They might alert the targets.”

<strong>World must share blame</strong>

Pakistan said the world must share the blame for failing to locate Bin Laden.

On the revelation that Bin Laden was living less than two hours’ drive north of Islamabad, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said: “Certainly, we have intelligence failure of the rest of the world including the United States.”

He told reporters during a visit to Paris that “(t)here is intelligence failure of the whole world, not Pakistan alone.”

He added that Pakistan needed “the support of the entire world” to eradicate terrorism.

US legislators along with the leaders of Britain and France questioned how the Pakistani government could not have known the al-Qaida leader was living in a garrison town less than a two-hour drive from the capital and had apparently lived there for years.

“I find it hard to believe that the presence of an individual such as Bin Laden in a large compound in a relatively small town … could go completely unnoticed,” French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told reporters in Paris.

Prime Minister David Cameron told BBC radio Britain would keep working with Pakistan to combat militancy, but insisted Bin Laden “must have had a support network in Pakistan” and that Islamabad must answer questions on the subject.

<strong>Calls for cuts in US aid</strong>

US officials have suggested Pakistani officials may have known where Bin Laden was living and members of Congress have seized on those suspicions to call for the US to consider cutting billions of aid to Pakistan if it turns out to be true.

The US Congress has approved $20 billion for Pakistan in direct aid and military reimbursements partly to help Islamabad fight militancy since al-Qaida’s strikes on the United States.

“Our government is in fiscal distress. To make contributions to a country that isn’t going to be fully supportive is a problem for many,” said Senate intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein.

In Kabul, the Afghan government said Pakistan must have known Bin Laden was living in a military garrison town near Islamabad.

<strong>Nurturing Islamic militants</strong>

Pakistan, where anti-US sentiment runs high, has a long history of nurturing Islamist militants in the interests of its strategic objectives, primarily facing up to what it sees as its biggest threat—India.

Western officials have long regarded Pakistani security forces with suspicion, especially when it comes to links with militants fighting in Afghanistan.

Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly said she suspected that some members of Pakistan’s government knew where Bin Laden was hiding.

The Obama administration has said it did not inform the Pakistanis in advance of the operation against Bin Laden, for fear they would tip off the targets.

<strong>Compound linked to al-Qaida</strong>

Still, there were other revelations that pointed to prior knowledge that the compound was linked to al-Qaida.

The Pakistani government said that since 2009 its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency had shared information about the compound with the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies, and that intelligence indicating foreigners were in the Abbottabad area continued until mid-April.

Asked in a BBC radio interview about the compound in Abbottabad where the al-Qaida chief was discovered, Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir said: “This particular location was pointed out by our intelligence quite some time ago to the US intelligence.”

On Panetta’s comments, Bashir said: “I know for sure that we have extended every cooperation to the US including the CIA as well as to other countries insofar as the campaign against terror is concerned.

“In terms of success in what is called global anti-terror, Pakistan has played a pivotal role so it is a little disquieting when we hear comments like this.”

<strong>Raid in 2003</strong>

Pakistani intelligence agencies hunting for a top al-Qaida operative raided the house in 2003, according to a senior officer, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with the spy agency’s policy.

The house was just being built at the time of the raid by the ISI, and Abu Faraj al-Libi, al-Qaida’s No. 3, was not there, said the officer.

US officials have said al-Libi once lived in the house and that information from him played a role in tracking the al-Qaida chief down. Al-Libi was arrested by Pakistani police after a shoot-out in 2005 and he was later handed over to US authorities.

The Pakistani officer said he didn’t know why Bin Laden would choose a house that already had been compromised.

He also insisted the ISI would have captured Bin Laden if it had known he was there, and pushed back at international criticism of the agency.

“Look at our track record given the issues we have faced, the lack of funds. We have killed or captured hundreds” (of extremists), said the officer. “All of a sudden one failure makes us incompetent and 10 years of effort is overlooked.”

Al-Qaida has been responsible for scores of bloody attacks inside Pakistan, so it would seem strange for Islamabad to be sheltering Bin Laden.

<strong>Keeping US aid flow</strong>

Critics of Pakistan say that by keeping him on the run, Islamabad was ensuring that US aid and weapons to the country kept flowing.

In an article published on Tuesday by The Washington Post, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari denied suggestions his country’s security forces may have sheltered Bin Laden, and said their cooperation with the United States helped pinpoint him.

The raid followed months of deteriorating relations between the CIA and Pakistan’s intelligence service. Those strains came to a head in late January after a CIA contractor shot and killed two Pakistanis in what Washington said was self-defense.

<strong>Committed to cooperate</strong>

In a nod to the complexities of dealing with a nuclear-armed, unstable country that is crucial to success in the war in Afghanistan, Cameron said having “a massive row” with Islamabad over the issue would not be in Britain’s interest.

White House spokesperson Jay Carney told reporters on Tuesday that the United States was committed to cooperating with Pakistan.

“We don’t know who if anybody in the government was aware that Bin Laden or a high-value target was living in the compound. It’s logical to assume he had a supporting network. What constituted that network remains to be seen,” Carney said. <strong><em>Reports from Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse</em></strong>