Pakistan: U.S. Raid 'Unauthorized'
The New York Times reports:
Toughening its stand, the Pakistani government lashed out at the United States on Tuesday for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, saying that the United States had made “an unauthorized unilateral action” that would be not be tolerated in the future.
The statement was clearly an attempt by the Pakistani leadership to recover from a day of confusion and paralysis over how to respond to the embarrassment and humiliation that Bin Laden had been discovered in Pakistan and killed in an operation early Monday in which they had no part.
It also signaled that the two sides will have a long way to go to overcome the trust deficit that the Bin Laden operation has now compounded, and that the risk of a rupture in relations was real.
Using stringent language, a statement by the Pakistani Foreign Office said, “Such an event shall not serve as a future precedent for any state, including the United States.”
The pushback came a day after Washington’s envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Marc Grossman, met with the head of the Pakistani army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, and told them that patience for Pakistan was wearing thin in Congress.
Mr. Grossman conveyed the message in a way to alert the Pakistani leaders that time was of the essence and that Pakistan needed to show some positive steps to stanch the tide of anger, according to Obama administration officials familiar with the meeting in Islamabad Monday night.
General Kayani and General Pasha, embarrassed at home and abroad by the raid that occurred without their permission, gave no specific response to the American diplomat, the officials said.
“The Pakistanis have been told by the Americans that the temperature is rising in Washington and the reaction has been silence,” one administration official said.
Still, Obama administration officials seem determined to avoid the kind of break in relations that would jeopardize the counterterrorism network they have carefully constructed in Pakistan over the last few years, and in public Mr. Grossman was more gentle.
At a news conference with the secretary of the Foreign Office, Salman Bashir, and Javeed Ludin, the Afghan deputy foreign minister, he said that “both Pakistan and Afghanistan are determined to curb terrorism.”
The tough statement by the Foreign Office came as anger mounted on Capitol Hill about Bin Laden being found in a garrison city in Pakistan after more than $10 billion dollars in assistance to Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies over the last decade.
