• Thursday, May 05, 2011
• Inter Press Service

U.S. officials were concerned that Pakistan could jeopardise the Osama bin Laden operation and 'might alert the targets', if Islamabad took part in the mission, Leon Panetta, the CIA director, has said.

In an interview with Time magazine published on Tuesday, Panetta said the CIA had ruled out working with Pakistan on the raid because 'it was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission: They might alert the targets'.

He said his aides had 60 to 80 percent confidence that bin Laden was in the compound in Abbottabad, a town about two hours north of Islamabad, the capital. Pakistan on Tuesday denied any prior knowledge of the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden, but said it had been sharing information about the targeted compound with the CIA since 2009.

While Islamabad hailed the killing of bin Laden as an important milestone in the fight against terrorism, the foreign ministry said Pakistan had expressed 'deep concerns' that the operation was carried out without informing it in advance.

'Neither any base nor facility inside Pakistan was used by the U.S. forces, nor the Pakistan Army provided any operational or logistic assistance to these operations conducted by the U.S. forces,' the ministry said in a lengthy statement.

'This event of unauthorised unilateral action cannot be taken as a rule.' The statement said U.S. helicopters entered Pakistani airspace by making use of 'blind spots' in the radar coverage caused by the hilly terrain surrounding Abbottabad.

The foreign ministry said the Pakistani air force scrambled its planes within minutes of being informed of the U.S. operation, but there was no engagement with the U.S. forces as they had already left Pakistani airspace.

It said Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency had been sharing information about the compound with the CIA and other friendly intelligence agencies since 2009, and had continued to do so until mid-April.

'It is important to highlight that taking advantage of much superior and technological assets, CIA exploited the intelligence leads given by U.S. to identify and reach Osama bin Laden,' the statement said. Hamid Gul, the former Chief of the ISI, told Al Jazeera that excluding the security agency from the operation demonstrated that the U.S. had no intention of capturing Bin Laden alive.

'The main reason I suspect, is that they did not want him alive ... if the ISI had been tipped off, the ISI would have gone and captured him and would have presented him for trial or something like that. 'Many untold stories would have come out ... they sneaked in and carried out a raid, which is an act of war actually,' Gul said.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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