WASHINGTON: Eminent lawmakers on Tuesday accused Pakistan of playing a
"double-game" with the US on the war against terror and raised suspicion that
its spy agency ISI was knowing about Osama bin Laden’s presence in the country.
The killing of the al Qaeda chief at a one-million dollar hideout just 120 km
away from Islamabad shows that Pakistan remains a critical but "uncertain ally"
in the fight against terrorism, Senator Susan Collins said.
"It’s very difficult for me to understand how this huge compound could be
built in a city just an hour north of the capital of Pakistan, in a city that
contained military installations, including the Pakistani military academy, and
that it did not arouse tremendous suspicion, especially since there were no
Internet or telephone connections and the waste was incinerated and there was
barbed wire all around the top of the compound," Collins said.
"So I think this tells us once again that unfortunately Pakistan at times is
playing a double game, and that’s very troubling to me," she told reporters.
The Senator said US needs to need to keep the pressure on Pakistan and for
that it should put "more strings attached to the tremendous amount of military
aid that we give the country."
Senator Joe Lieberman said there are going to be a lot of questions raised
here in the Congress about what people in the Pakistani intelligence agency
particularly knew or should have known about the presence of bin Laden in
Pakistan itself.
"For years, you know, the Pakistani officials have said to us he’s not in
Pakistan; he’s in the mountains in Waziristan between Pakistan and Afghanistan."
Lieberman said, "My own experience with the Pakistanis is that this is one of
the most complicated, maybe the most complicated security-intelligence
relationship we have with any nation in the world, because, on the one hand, the
fact is, they do give us very helpful intelligence assistance and military
assistance. But on the other hand, we have a lot of reason to believe that
elements of their intelligence community continue to be very closely in touch
with and perhaps supportive of terrorist groups that are fighting us and the
Afghans in Afghanistan."
Lieberman said it will be a "real pressure" on Pakistan to prove they did not
know bin Laden’s presence. Online
