No ‘clear evidence’ Pakistan knew location of bin Laden
Michele Flournoy, the top policy aide to Defence Secretary Robert Gates, told reporters that the Pakistani government should, for example, help the US exploit materials the SEALs collected inside bin Laden’s lair.
Flournoy was the first Pentagon official to comment on the record about the raid. She offered no new details but said it offered an incentive for Pakistan to co- operate more fully in defeating the terrorist network.
“This is a real moment of opportunity for us in terms of making further gains against al-Qaida,” she said.
Questions over what Pakistan knew of bin Laden’s whereabouts, and that it may even have helped hide him, arose immediately after Monday’s raid. Flournoy said US officials have pressed Pakistan on the matter.
“We are still talking with the Pakistanis and trying to understand what they did know, what they didn’t know,” she said. “We do not have any definitive evidence at this point that they did know that Osama bin Laden was at this compound.”
Pressed for more detail about what evidence the US might have about Pakistani knowledge of bin Laden’s whereabouts prior to the raid, she declined to elaborate, saying that kind of information would have to come from the CIA, which led the hunt for bin Laden and oversaw Monday’s raid.
In Islamabad, Pakistan’s army called for cuts in the number of US military personnel inside the country, and it threatened to cut co-operation with Washington if it stages more unilateral raids on its territory. A small number of US soldiers have been training Pakistani forces in counter-insurgency operations.
Flournoy said she held previously scheduled talks at the Pentagon on Monday with a Pakistani government delegation.
In that session and follow-up talks on Tuesday, she said she made clear that members of Congress will be increasingly sceptical about continuing to provide billions of dollars in US aid.
Pakistan must take “very concrete and visible steps to show their co-operation as a counter-terrorism partner,” she said, “because I do think that Congress will have to be convinced to sustain both civilian and military assistance to Pakistan”.
She said the Obama administration still intends to keep close ties to Pakistan, even as it presses the Pakistanis for more information about bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad.
PAKISTAN, in apparent reference to old rival India, said yesterday any country that tried to raid its territory in the way US forces did to kill Osama bin Laden would face consequences from its military.
The raid by US special forces that killed Washington’s most wanted man in the city of Abbottabad on May 2 has exposed the Pakistani military to rare criticism at home.
The US ally also faces growing international pressure to explain how was it possible for bin Laden to live close by the military’s main academy without the knowledge of security agencies. Foreign secretary Salman Bashir dismissed any suggestion the military or its main spy agency had been involved with al-Qaida and issued a blunt warning against any further intrusions.
“We feel that that sort of misadventure or miscalculation would result in a terrible catastrophe,” he said. “There should be no doubt Pakistan has adequate capacity to ensure its own defence.”
“Any other country that would ever act on the assumption that it has the might and mimic unilateralism of any sorts will find… that it has made a basic miscalculation.”
US special forces launched the Monday morning raid without the knowledge of Pakistan officials.
The army, which has long been seen as the most effective institution in an unstable country, has been facing growing criticism over the perceived violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. The military has not commented on the raid.
Bashir’s comments, while apparently directed at India, also seemed aimed at reassuring the public the military was capable of defending the country.
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