|
Pakistan tells US military to leave 'drone' attack base
 [Dawn] Pakistain told the United States to leave a remote desert air base reportedly used as a hub for covert CIA drone attacks, Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar was quoted by state media as saying Wednesday.His remarks are the latest indication of Pakistain attempting to limit US activities since a clandestine American military raid killed the late Osama bin Laden ... who has made the transition back to dust... on May 2 and plunged ties between the anti-terror allies into chaos. "We have told them (US officials) to leave the air base," national news agency APP quoted Mukhtar as telling a group of journalists in his office. Images said to be of US Predator drones at Shamsi have been published by Google Earth in the past. The air strip is 900 kilometres (560 miles) southwest of the capital Islamabad in Baluchistan province. A US embassy spokeswoman told AFP there were no US military personnel at the Shamsi base. American drone attacks on Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistain's northwestern semi-autonomous tribal belt are hugely unpopular among a general public opposed to the government's alliance with Washington. CNN reported in April that US military personnel had left the base, said to be a key hub for American drone operations, in the fallout over public killings by a CIA contractor in Lahore and his subsequent detention. Reports said operations at the base, which Washington has not publicly acknowledged, were conducted with tacit Pak military consent. Neither does the United States officially confirm Predator drone attacks, but its military and the CIA operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy the armed, unmanned aircraft in the region. The bin Laden raid humiliated the Pak military and invited allegations of incompetence and complicity, as well as severely damaging trust between Islamabad and Washington. "This trust deficit could be reduced by sitting together and taking joint actions," the state-sun News Agency that Dare Not be Named of Pakistain quoted Mukhtar as saying. According to US Vice Admiral William McRaven, who oversaw the bin Laden raid, the US military believes Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar is in Pakistain and had asked the Mighty Pak Army to find him. Asked about Omar, Mukhtar said: "If he was in Pakistain, even then, he would have left the country after the Abbottabad incident."
Posted by: Fred 2011-06-30 |
|
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=325436 |