Washington: An American investigator of the last month NATO rain on
two Pakistani border posts which killed 24 soldiers has found that the
US forces ‘acted in self defense and with appropriate force after being
fired upon’.
“The investigating officer found that U.S. forces,
given what information they had available to them at the time, acted in
self defense and with appropriate force after being fired upon,” a US
Department of Defence statement said on Thursday.
The
investigator also found that there was no intentional effort to target
persons or places known to be part of the Pakistani military, or to
deliberately provide inaccurate location information to Pakistani
officials.
“Nevertheless, inadequate coordination by U.S. and
Pakistani military officers operating through the border coordination
center -- including our reliance on incorrect mapping information shared
with the Pakistani liaison officer -- resulted in a misunderstanding
about the true location of Pakistani military units”.
“This,
coupled with other gaps in information about the activities and
placement of units from both sides, contributed to the tragic result,”
the investigator said in his report.
A statement said that the
findings and conclusions were forwarded to the Department through the
chain of command and the results have also been shared with the
Pakistani and Afghan governments, as well as key NATO leadership.
“For
the loss of life -- and for the lack of proper coordination between US
and Pakistani forces that contributed to those losses -- we express our
deepest regret,” the statement said.
The US further expressed
sincere condolences to the Pakistani people, to the Pakistani
government, and most importantly to the families of the Pakistani
soldiers who were killed or wounded.
The statement said that the
US focus now is to learn from these mistakes and take whatever
corrective measures are required to ensure an incident like this is not
repeated.
“The chain of command will consider any issues of
accountability. More critically, we must work to improve the level of
trust between our two countries”.
The statement said that the US
cannot operate effectively on the border -- or in other parts of the
bilateral relationship -- without addressing the fundamental trust still
lacking between us. “We earnestly hope the Pakistani military will
join us in bridging that gap,” the statement said. Online
