Obama sees Pakistani deaths as tragedy: spokesman
[Dawn] President Barack I inhaled. That was the point Obama sees the deaths of 24 Pak soldiers in a NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all....
raid as a tragedy, the White House said Monday, but argued that crisis-wracked US-Pak ties were vital to both sides.
White House front man Jay Carney said Obama believed Saturday's attack which threw US-Pak ties into turmoil was "a tragedy," adding that "we mourn those brave Pak service members that bit the dust." "We take this matter very seriously," said Carney, adding that two inquiries by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and US Central Command would examine what took place.
"As for our relationship with Pakistain, it continues to be an important cooperative relationship that is also very complicated," Carney said.
"It is very much in America's national security interest to maintain a cooperative relationship with Pakistain because we have shared interests in the fight against terrorism," Carney said.
Pakistain earlier vowed no more "business as usual" with the United States but stopped short of threatening to break the troubled alliance altogether.
NATO and the United States are trying to limit fallout from the attack but Islamabad has shut vital supply routes to the 140,000 foreign troops serving in Afghanistan.
Pakistain called the strike "unprovoked," worsening US-Pak relations which were already in crisis after the killing in May of the late Osama bin Laden
... Maybe his Mom misses him...
north of Islamabad by US special forces.
The Wall Street Journal, following a similar report by Britannia's Guardian newspaper, cited three Afghan officials and one Western official as saying the air raid was called in to shield allied forces targeting Taliban fighters.
NATO and Afghan forces "were fired on from a Mighty Pak Army base," the unnamed Western official told the Journal. "It was a defensive action." An Afghan official said the Kabul government believes the fire came from the Pak military base -- and not from Death Eaters. Afghan-Pak relations suffer from routine mutual recriminations.
Posted by: Fred 2011-11-29 |