Wazoo and insisted that no decision had been taken so far."Fantasy" would probably be more accurate...
"It doesn't seem so," responded Peshawar Corps Commander Lt-Gen Khalid Rabbani when asked if a military operation in North Waziristan was imminent. "No such decision is in front of me," he said at a dinner in Peshawar on Thursday evening.
| "Why, to do that we'd need an army," the general continued... |
"I asked one of my officers this morning, 'who is carrying out the operation?' At least I am not aware of any such operation," he said in a lighter vein.
Guarded and careful, Gen. Rabbani said that political ownership and national consensus were pre-requisites for any decision to launch a military operation in North Waziristan.
| So it'll never happen... |
But Gen. Rabbani sought to play down claims by Panetta, saying that a decision on "when to launch an operation, why to launch an operation and against whom to launch the operation, would be made in Pakistan and not outside".
"Let me tell you, the decision will be made in Islamabad and not outside. Whenever there is an operation, if there is an operation, it will be done by the Pakistan Army. There will be no foreign signature or footprints," Rabbani was quoted by the media as saying.
"The decision will have to be made in our own environment," he added.