Pakistan threatens U.S. on cooperation if more raids

By Augustine Anthony and Michelle Nichols
ABBOTTABAD/NEW YORK | Thu May 5, 2011 10:08pm EDT

(Reuters) - Pakistan's army threatened on Thursday to reconsider its anti-terrorism cooperation with the United States if Washington carried out another unilateral attack like the killing of Osama bin Laden.

In New York, U.S. President Barack Obama met firefighters and visited Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan to offer comfort to a city still scarred by the September 11, 2001, attacks masterminded by bin Laden that killed nearly 3,000 people.

He said the killing of bin Laden by a U.S. commando team in Pakistan on Monday "sent a message around the world, but also sent a message here back home, that when we say we will never forget, we mean what we say."

But a senior Pakistani security official said U.S. troops killed bin Laden in "cold blood," straining a relationship that Washington deems vital to defeating the al Qaeda movement that bin Laden led and winning its war in neighboring Afghanistan.

A major Islamist party in Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami, called for mass protests on Friday against what it called a violation of sovereignty by the U.S. raid. It also urged the government to end support for U.S. battles against militants.

Seeking to repair ties, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Rome on Thursday that Washington was still anxious to maintain its alliance with Islamabad.

The Pakistani army and spy agency have supplied intelligence to the United States, arrested al Qaeda figures and taken on militants in areas bordering Afghanistan.

"It is not always an easy relationship," Clinton said. "But, on the other hand, it is a productive one for both our countries and we are going to continue to cooperate between our governments, our militaries, our law-enforcement agencies."

But Pakistan's army, facing rare criticism at home over the U.S. operation in Abbottabad, a town just an hour's drive from the capital, said in its first comment since the attack that Chief of Staff General Ashfaq Kayani had sent a stern warning.

Kayani "made it clear that any similar action violating the sovereignty of Pakistan will warrant a review on the level of military/intelligence cooperation with the United States," the army said.

The army also said it would conduct an investigation into failures by its intelligence to detect the world's most wanted man in its own backyard.

Americans are questioning how the al Qaeda leader could live for years in a Pakistani garrison town. Two lawmakers, Republican Kay Granger and Democrat Howard Berman, wrote to Clinton on Thursday complaining about U.S. aid to Pakistan.

SHOTS CONTROVERSY

In a further sign of fractious relations between the allies, senior Pakistani security officials told Reuters that U.S. accounts had been misleading in describing a long gunbattle at the compound where bin Laden and four others were killed by an elite squad of U.S. Navy SEALs.

In Washington, people familiar with the latest U.S. government reporting on the raid told Reuters on Thursday that only one of four principal targets shot to death by U.S. commandos was involved in any hostile fire.

As the SEALs moved in on a guest house inside bin Laden's compound, they were met with fire and shot a man in the guest house. He proved to be Abu Ahmed Al-Kuwaiti, an al Qaeda courier U.S. intelligence agencies had long been tracking.

The commandos then entered the main residence, where they killed another courier and a son of bin Laden, the sources said. They finally shot and killed the al Qaeda leader in a top-floor room after having earlier fired at him as he poked his head out of a door or over a balcony.

U.S. officials originally spoke of a 40-minute firefight. The White House has blamed the "fog of war" for the changing accounts.

A U.S. acknowledgment that bin Laden was unarmed when shot in the head -- as well as the sea burial of his body, a rare practice in Islam -- have drawn criticism in the Arab world and Europe, where some have warned of a backlash against the West.

U.S.-PAKISTAN FRICTION

Obama visited New York to say he had made good on a 10-year-old promise by his predecessor, George W. Bush, who declared at the smoldering wreckage of the World Trade Center three days after the September 11 attacks, "The people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."

Obama went to a firehouse that lost 15 members in the attacks, before heading to Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, to lay a wreath and meet with victims' families.

He shook hands with firefighters and told them, "This is a symbolic site of the extraordinary sacrifice that was made on that terrible day almost 10 years ago."

"We have been waiting for this for 10 years. It puts a little more American pride in people," said Al Fiammetta, 57, a safety engineer who said he had cleared debris at Ground Zero.

New York City resident Caroline Epner, 32, said, "It's OK for him (Obama) to take a victory lap."

Friction between Washington and Pakistan has focused on the role of Pakistan's top security service, the ISI or Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.

Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir denied Pakistani forces or the ISI aided al Qaeda. "The critique of the ISI is not only unwarranted, it cannot be validated," he said.

Lobbyists for Pakistan in Washington have launched an intense campaign on Capitol Hill to counter accusations that Islamabad deliberately gave refuge to bin Laden.

In Rome for talks on aiding Libya's rebels, Clinton reminded her international audience that bin Laden had been a clear target for the United States since 2001 and that his death did not end the battle against al Qaeda.

U.S. Marine Corps Major General Richard Mills said the raid that killed bin Laden could provide an intelligence bonanza in seized information on Afghanistan. "I think it will identify people who are providing ... material support to the insurgency" there, he said.

Obama signaled in an interview with the CBS television program "60 Minutes" that bin Laden's death confirmed his commitment to begin drawing down troops in Afghanistan in July. "We don't need to have a perpetual footprint of the size that we have now," he said in a published excerpt.

U.S. officials said some evidence was found at bin Laden's hide-out indicating al Qaeda had at one point considered attacking the U.S. rail system on the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks later this year.

But Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler said there was "no information of any imminent terrorist threat to the U.S. rail sector."

(Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux worldwide; Writing by Alastair Macdonald and Patrick Worsnip; Editing by Eric Beech and Peter Cooney)



パキスタン軍、ビンラディン容疑者殺害で「対米関係見直しも」

2011年 05月 6日 09:15 JST

　［イスラマバード　５日　ロイター］　パキスタン軍トップのキアニ陸軍参謀長は５日、米軍がアルカイダの指導者ウサマ・ビンラディン容疑者を殺害したことについて、パキスタンの主権が再び侵害された場合、米国側との関係を見直すと強く警告した。

　キアニ陸軍参謀長は声明で、「パキスタンの主権を侵害する同様の行為が行われれば、米国との軍事・情報面における協力レベルを見直すことになるのは当然だ」と表明した。

　米軍がパキスタン軍への事前連絡なしに今回の急襲作戦を行ったことをめぐり、パキスタン国内では同国軍への批判が高まっており、一部のイスラム系政党からは、米軍が主導する対アルカイダなどへの作戦に協力しないよう求める声も出ている。