Pakistan PM says bin Laden accusations absurd 5

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Pakistan PM says bin Laden accusations absurd 5

Chalmers, Reuters

First posted: Monday, May 9, 2011 4:26:14 EDT AM

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani rejected on Monday

allegations that the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. troops in the country

showed Pakistani incompetence or complicity in hiding the al-Qaida leader.

Opposition politicians have stepped up their criticism of Pakistan's leaders

over the killing of bin Laden in a raid by U.S. special forces in a northern

Pakistani town on May 2.

Pakistan welcomed the death of bin Laden, who plotted the Sept. 11, 2001,

airliner attacks on the United States, as a step in the fight against militancy

but also complained that the raid was a violation of its sovereignty.

The fact that bin Laden was found hiding in the garrison town of Abbottabad, 50

km (30 miles) from the capital, has led to accusations that Pakistani security

agencies were either incompetent or sheltering the world's most wanted man.

" Allegations of complicity or incompetence are absurd, " Gilani said in a

televised address to parliament, adding that it was disingenuous for anyone to

accuse Pakistan, including its spy agency, of " being in cahoots " with the

al-Qaida network.

The U.S. raid has added to strains in ties between Islamabad and Washington,

which are crucial to combating Islamist militants and to bringing stability to

Afghanistan.

The United States has stopped short of accusing Pakistan of providing shelter to

bin Laden.

Gilani warned that unilateral actions such as the U.S. Navy SEALs swoop on bin

Laden's hideout ran the risk of serious consequences, but he added that Pakistan

attached high importance to its relations with the United States.

Pakistan's main opposition party has called on Gilani and President Asif Ali

Zardari to resign over the breach of sovereignty by U.S. special forces who

slipped in from Afghanistan to storm the compound where bin Laden was holed up.

TENSE RELATIONS WITH WASHINGTON

Pakistani-U.S. relations were already fragile after a string of diplomatic

disputes over issues including a big attack by a U.S. drone aircraft in March

and , a CIA contractor who shot dead two Pakistanis in the city of

Lahore in January.

Potentially stirring tension further, a Pakistani TV channel and a newspaper

published what they said was the name of the undercover CIA station chief in

Islamabad.

The U.S. embassy declined to comment, but said no one of that name worked at the

mission in Pakistan.

Last year, after the chief of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)

agency was named in a U.S. civil case over attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai,

the then-head of the CIA's Islamabad station was named by Pakistani media and

forced to leave the country.

The government and military have been embarrassed by the discovery of bin Laden

in Abbottabad, near the country's main military academy.

" If he was really living in that compound for five years ... then why didn't our

agencies discover him? " former foreign minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri told

reporters. " This has given anti-Pakistani elements a chance to ridicule us. "

OBAMA SUSPECTS SUPPORT NETWORK

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Sunday that bin Laden likely had " some sort "

of a support network inside Pakistan, but added it would take investigations by

Pakistan and the United States to find out just what the nature of that support

was.

" We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside

of Pakistan. But we don't know who or what that support network was, " Obama

said.

" We don't know whether there might have been some people inside of government,

people outside of government, and that's something that we have to investigate,

and more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate, " he added.

The government's opponents at home are incensed more about the humiliation of an

unannounced swoop by helicopter-borne foreign forces in Pakistan than they are

about the possibility that establishment insiders knew where bin Laden was

hiding.

" I think it is a big blow to Pakistan's sovereignty, Pakistan's independence and

Pakistan's self-respect, " former prime minister Nawaz Sharif told reporters in

Lahore. " Pakistan is in a grave crisis and is surrounded by big danger. "

Suspicion has deepened that the pervasive ISI, which has a long history of

contacts with militant groups, may have had ties with the al-Qaida leader — or

that some of its agents did.

Talat Masood, a retired general and defence analyst, said that if there was

official collusion to keep bin Laden secure it was most likely provided at a

local level.

" I feel definitely there were influential people who were protecting him, " he

told Reuters. " I believe there was real ignorance at the highest level but there

was collusion at the local level. "

Pakistani security officials reacted with scepticism to a U.S. assertion that

bin Laden was actively engaged in directing his far-flung network from his

Abbottabad compound.

Washington has said that, based on a trove of information that would fill a

small college library seized in the raid, the hide-out was an " active command

and control centre " for al-Qaida where he was involved in plotting attacks on

the United States.

Analysts have long maintained that, years before bin Laden's death, al-Qaida had

fragmented into a decentralized group that operated tactically without him.