Pakistan Launches Bin Laden Inquiry

BBC reports:

Pakistan is to launch an investigation into how Osama Bin Laden was able to live in the garrison city of Abbottabad undetected, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has told parliament.

But he insisted that allegations of Pakistani complicity and incompetence were "absurd".

US President Barack Obama has urged Pakistan to investigate the suspected network that sustained Bin Laden.

Mr Obama said it had to find out if any officials knew of his whereabouts.

In a statement to MPs about the raid by US special forces which led to the death of Bin Laden last week, Mr Gilani said Lt-Gen Javed Iqbal would lead the investigation into the failures to detect the al-Qaeda leader.

"We are determined to get to the bottom of how, when and why about OBL's presence in Abbottabad," Mr Gilani said.

He mounted a strong defence of Pakistan's record in fighting terrorism, highlighting the "price paid" in civilian and military losses, and the numbers of al-Qaeda militants killed or arrested.

There have been suspicions that someone in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency, which has a long history of contacts with militant groups, may have known where Bin Laden was hiding.

But Mr Gilani told MPs that the ISI, and the military, had the full support and confidence of the government.

He said the US raid was "a violation of sovereignty", and suggested that Washington had helped create al-Qaeda during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The US had then widely dispersed al-Qaeda's fighters by following a "flawed" military strategy to try to capture Bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora in 2001, he added.