ISLAMABAD - Pakistan 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 on Wednesday.
His
remarks are the latest indication of Pakistan attempting to limit US
activities since a clandestine American military raid killed Osama bin
Laden on May 2. Islamabad also detained a CIA contractor wanted for
murder in January.
"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 base 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 Shamsi.
American
drone attacks on Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan's
northwestern semi-autonomous tribal belt are hugely unpopular among a
general public opposed to the government's alliance with Washington.
Despite
condemning the drone strikes in public, US documents leaked by Internet
whistleblower Wikileaks late last year showed that Pakistani civilian
and militant leaders had privately consented to the drone campaign.
CNN
reported in April that US military personnel had left the base, said to
be a key site 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 Pakistani 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
in the region that deploy the armed, unmanned aircraft.
Pakistani
and US officials have frequently been drawn into slanging matches,
played out in the press, since the bin Laden raid humiliated the
military and invited allegations of incompetence and complicity, as
well as damaging trust.
"This trust deficit could be reduced by
sitting together and taking joint actions," the state-sun Associated
Press of Pakistan quoted Mukhtar as saying.
On Tuesday, US Vice
Admiral William McRaven, who oversaw the bin Laden raid, said the US
military believes Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar is in Pakistan and
had asked the Pakistani army to find him.
Asked about Omar,
Mukhtar said: "If he was in Pakistan, even then, he would have left the
country after the Abbottabad incident."
Mukhtar, who belongs to
the ruling Pakistan People's Party, said that he supported negotiations
with the Taliban to resolve the conflict in Afghanistan.
McRaven
also said Pakistan showed no sign of either wanting or being able to
crack down on the Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani network operating from
sanctuaries near the Afghan border, despite repeated US requests. AFP
