LONDON: Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, says he has
received US assurances there will be no repeat of the unilateral raid
that killed Osama Bin Laden in May.
Gilani’s remarks, in an
interview with the Guardian, contradict assertions by the US president,
Barack Obama, and other American officials that US forces would take
similar action against other al-Qaida leaders if necessary.
Gilani
was speaking in London at a time when Pakistani relations with the
west, particularly the US, are at a low in the wake of the raid on Bin
Laden’s hideout in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad on 2 May.
After
the special forces operation, US officials voiced suspicions that Bin
Laden must have had a network of local supporters, possibly inside the
Pakistani state, while Pakistani leaders were outraged not to have been
consulted over the raid inside their territory.
"Since we were
sharing information with US and there was a tremendous relationship
with the CIA and ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence], therefore we could
have done a joint operation in Abbottabad, but it didn’t happen.
Therefore we had a lot of reservations," Gilani said.
He added:
"They have assured us in future there will be no unilateral actions in
Pakistan, and there would be co-operation between both agencies."
The
Pakistani prime minister said he had received the assurance personally
from the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. In her public
statements, however, Clinton has declared the US would strike
unilaterally against other top militants if others did not.
Speaking
to the BBC just before his visit to Britain the same month, Obama was
equally blunt on the issue. He said: "We are very respectful of the
sovereignty of Pakistan. But we cannot allow someone who is planning to
kill our people or our allies’ people – we can’t allow those kind of
active plans to come to fruition without us taking some action." On
Thursday, however, Gilani said any repeat of the Abbottabad raid would
be "totally unacceptable".
"Public opinion would further
aggravate against the United States and you cannot fight a war without
the support of the masses. You need the masses to support military
actions against militants," he said.
He said another raid would
damage "not only our relationship, but also our common objective, to
fight against militants. We are fighting a war and if we fail that
means that it’s not good for the world. We can’t afford losing." After
the raid against Bin Laden, the Pakistani government said it had
stopped the US launching drones from its territory in pursuit of
militants in tribal areas. Nevertheless, drone strikes on the Pakistani
side of the border with Afghanistan have continued.
"We don’t
allow our bases to be used. They have other bases they use," Gilani
said. Asked where those bases were, he replied: "I don’t know. You ask
the Americans. This is a question to put to them."
The prime
minister added: "Drone attacks are against our strategy too, because we
have been isolating the militants from the local population and when
there are drone attacks they get united again." Online
