THE WAR of words between Pakistan and the US in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing has intensified, with senior officials on both sides trading remarks that underline their mutual mistrust, and the White House reversing its position on key details of the raid.
In Islamabad the Pakistani foreign ministry issued a hardline statement condemning the raid on bin Laden’s house as an “unauthorised unilateral action”, and warned that this would not be tolerated in future.
In Washington, the CIA chief, Leon Panetta, said Pakistan was not informed of the assault on Abbottabad, a military garrison town, because US officials feared the al-Qaeda leader could have been warned.
“It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardise the mission. They might alert the targets,” he told Time magazine.
Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Salman Bashir, described the American attitude as “disquieting”, asserting that Pakistan had played a key role in the fight against Islamist militancy.
“Most of these things that have happened in terms of global anti-terror, Pakistan has played a pivotal role,” he said. “So it’s a little disquieting when we have comments like this.”
Earlier, President Asif Ali Zardari said American claims were “baseless speculation that doesn’t reflect fact”.
Meanwhile, American accounts of bin Laden’s death have come under intense scrutiny following White House admissions that early official reports claiming Bin Laden had been armed and cowered behind his wife during the assault were false.
Bin Laden’s wife, earlier said to have been killed, survived and is in Pakistani custody. A Pakistani television station, Geo, published a copy of her passport, naming her as Amal Ahmed Abdel Fatteh, a Yemeni citizen.
Pakistan’s military, the brunt of much of the speculation, has been largely quiet, although officials from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have released some details about the raid based on interviews with Bin Laden relatives left behind by the US Navy Seal team.
A senior ISI official said Bin Laden’s 12-year-old daughter had witnessed her father being killed and confirmed his death. “She said she saw him being shot,” said the official.
The official did not know the name of the girl, adding between 18 and 19 people were in the compound at the time of the attack.
He said the ISI had raided the Abbottabad house as it was under construction in 2003 in search of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, an al-Qaeda lieutenant who was eventually captured two years later.
But satellite imagery from 2004 shows an empty field on the site, and later images suggest that construction started a year later, shortly before US officials say Bin Laden and his family moved in.
Inside Pakistan, media coverage has focused on whether the government or military had advance knowledge of the raid – a sensitive issue given widespread anti-American sentiment and worries about breaches of sovereignty.
The foreign ministry statement said reports that US helicopters had taken off from Ghazi airbase inside Pakistan were "absolutely false and incorrect". – (Guardianservice)