India: Pakistan defiant against US criticism

The Times of India

Allegations of complicity or incompetence are absurd: Pakistan PM

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani rejected on Monday allegations that the killing of Osama bin Laden by US 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 US 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 US 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 US 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 US special forces who slipped in from Afghanistan to storm the compound where bin Laden was holed up.

OBAMA SUSPECTS SUPPORT NETWORK
US 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 US 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 Qaeda where he was involved in plotting attacks on the United States.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/Allegations-of-complicity-or-incompetence-are-absurd-Pakistan-PM/articleshow/8207759.cms