Hina Rabbani Khar: NATO attacks have left many speculations

Hina Rabbani Khar: NATO attacks have left many speculations

The NATO attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers "leaves many, many unanswered questions", Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said in a statement.

Ms. Khar told the US National Public Radio that even if the Nov 26 airstrike was a mistake, "it’s certainly a callous mistake because this did not happen over five minutes.

"This was into hours, for sure, and that leaves many, many unanswered questions," she reiterated in Lahore.

NATO gunships helicopter opened fire at two Pakistan Army check posts, killing two dozen soldiers and causing an outcry in the country. Islamabad promptly cut-off the road passage of NATO supply across the country and also announced a boycott of next week’s
Bonn conference on Afghanistan.

Khar said the NATO attack is not the first breech of Pakistan aerospace however; it has raised countless the red flags on US-Pak alliance in war on terror. She further added that it is still undecided whether Islamabad will join an investigation into the
event, according to Associated Press of Pakistan.

"I think the questions raised in Pakistan are much larger than whether we will participate in the investigation or not. I want to emphasize on the fact that this is not an isolated incident," she said.

The foreign minister recalled that the unilateral raid in Abbottabad spurred conflict on the clarity of the red lines that Pakistan has drawn in cooperation with the international community in the anti-terror fight.

US special services operators, onboard stealth helicopters, had deliberately sneaked into Abbottabad uninformed and killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on May 2.

Khar said: "If the terms of engagement are not clearly understood, are not clearly respected, that gives each of the parties the right to go back and reassess the situation that I think Pakistan is, today, just exercising that right."

The foreign minister said that Pakistan feels its role in the decade-old fight against terror has been "misinterpreted, has not been recognized, has not been appreciated enough".

"And, on top of that, to have an incident in which we feel, at best, giving the benefit of doubt, our soldiers lost their lives to an extremely callous attitude. This episode has obviously created a lot of rage in Pakistan although this is not the first
time that Pakistan has lost its soldiers to NATO fire."

While Pakistan would like to wait for detailed investigations, the current briefings “seem to be pointing towards a direction which is not a happy case to be in”, Khar hinted of a notion whether the NATO strike was deliberate.

"If it is a deliberate attempt, then the questions that I referred to would obviously be much, much, much more serious," she added.

To another query, she said: "I’m not going to rush into any conclusion and I hope that it is not true, but the fact of the matter is that even if it is a mistake, it is certainly a callous mistake because this did not happen over five minutes. This was into
hours, for sure, and that leaves many, many unanswered questions."

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Posted by Ahmer Gul Khan on Dec 1 2011. Filed under Latest News, National, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry