2011年6月18日星期六

Pakistani Army Denies Sharing U.S. Report With Bomb Makers

The army called the assertions of collusion with militants “totally false and malicious.”


American officials said in early June that they had shared satellite information with Pakistan about two militant bomb-making factories. Within 24 hours, they said, they watched the militants clear out the sites, raising suspicions that the Pakistanis had shared the information.


In a carefully worded, two-paragraph statement on Friday, the Pakistani Army does not say that the United States had shared intelligence on the sites in question. But the statement said the army’s attempts to destroy four militant bomb-making factories only partly succeeded because intelligence on two of the sites was wrong.


The statement did not say where the sites were or when the raids occurred. But it is likely to further add to tensions between the United States and Pakistan, whose relations have been strained since the United States killed Osama bin Laden last month without notifying officials here ahead of time.


Various news media accounts said the factories were in the Waziristan stretch of Pakistan’s tribal belt, where militant fighters with Al Qaeda and the Taliban have long proliferated. The intelligence sharing was part of a United States attempt to improve the relationship with Pakistan.


Bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan only added to American suspicions that elements within Pakistan’s powerful security establishment were playing a double game by colluding with some militants while going after others.


Pakistani leaders have denied knowing that Bin Laden was in Abbottabad, and American officials have said they have seen no evidence that the upper ranks of the Pakistani military or civilian leadership helped hide him. In another sign of tensions, the Foreign Ministry lodged a protest on Friday with the American Embassy over an attack on a Pakistani military post.


In a statement, the ministry said it had told the United States of its “serious concern” about an incursion by NATO aircraft a mile and a half inside the Mohmand tribal area, in which the ministry said a Pakistani military post was attacked.


A ministry spokeswoman, Tehmina Janjua, said that the attack occurred around 9 a.m. on Friday, but that there were no casualties.


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