US President Barack Obama has no plans to visit Pakistan in the near future amid speculations that Osama bin Laden had a support network in Pakistan, US National Security Adviser Thomas E. Donilon has said.
"There is not a visit on his schedule at this point. If he'd go to Pakistan, but there was at this point scheduling before the events of last Sunday," when US commandos killed Bin Laden in his hideout, the Dawn quoted Donilon, as saying.
Obama had earlier said "there had to be some sort of support network for Bin Laden inside of Pakistan," though he had insisted that US was not sure about what kind of support system he had there.
"We don't know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government, and that's something that we have to investigate and, more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate," he added.
Meanwhile, Donilon also said he had "not seen evidence" to suggest "that the political, the military or the intelligence leadership would have foreknowledge of Bin Laden", but raised suspicion that it is "extraordinarily hard" to believe that the al-Qaeda leader had been living in that country for so long without their knowledge.
He also rejected reports that US did not warn Pakistan before carrying out the operation in the Abbottabad compound because of a lack of trust, saying: "That's not a matter of trusting or not trusting and let me address that. It's a matter of operational security. To share it with any government outside the US would have been to lose control of dissemination which would not have been in the national interest." (ANI)
"There is not a visit on his schedule at this point. If he'd go to Pakistan, but there was at this point scheduling before the events of last Sunday," when US commandos killed Bin Laden in his hideout, the Dawn quoted Donilon, as saying.
Obama had earlier said "there had to be some sort of support network for Bin Laden inside of Pakistan," though he had insisted that US was not sure about what kind of support system he had there.
"We don't know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government, and that's something that we have to investigate and, more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate," he added.
Meanwhile, Donilon also said he had "not seen evidence" to suggest "that the political, the military or the intelligence leadership would have foreknowledge of Bin Laden", but raised suspicion that it is "extraordinarily hard" to believe that the al-Qaeda leader had been living in that country for so long without their knowledge.
He also rejected reports that US did not warn Pakistan before carrying out the operation in the Abbottabad compound because of a lack of trust, saying: "That's not a matter of trusting or not trusting and let me address that. It's a matter of operational security. To share it with any government outside the US would have been to lose control of dissemination which would not have been in the national interest." (ANI)
