US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said Washington is disappointed and suspicious that militants in Pakistan were apparently tipped off that American intelligence officials had discovered two of their suspected bomb-making facilities,
but stopped short of concluding that Pakistani officials had leaked the information to the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani insurgents.
The US provided Pakistan with the specific locations of insurgent bomb-making factories twice in recent weeks, only to see the militants learn their cover had been blown and vacate the sites before military action could be taken, US and Pakistani officials said.
“We don’t know the specifics of what happened. There are suspicions and there are questions, but I think there was clearly disappointment on our part,” The Washington Post quoted Gates, as telling a foreign news agency in an exclusive interview.
Trust has been in short supply in the US-Pakistan relationship, highlighted most dramatically by the US decision not to tell Islamabad in advance of the May 2 Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan’s Abbottabad city, out of fear that they might tip off the al-Qaida leader or his protectors.
The State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, Daniel Benjamin, said on Tuesday that Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US troops in last month’s raid on his lair, “obviously” benefited from a support network inside Pakistan.
When asked whether it was time to take a harder line with Pakistan, Gates counselled patience, and noted that the Pakistanis have not forgotten that the US abandoned them in the late 1980s after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan.
“We need each other, and this relationship goes beyond Afghanistan,” he said. “It has to do with regional stability, and I think we have to be realistic about Pakistani distrust ... and their deep belief that when we’re done with al-Qaida that we’ll be gone, again.” ANI
