Pakistan says NATO attack threatens war on terror

December 1, 2011 - The Himalayan
http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Pakis...

ISLAMABAD (REUTERS): Pakistan, enraged by a NATO cross-border attack that killed 24 soldiers, could end support for the US-led war on militancy if its sovereignty is violated again, the foreign minister said, adding ‘enough is enough’.

The South Asian nation has already shown its anger over the weekend strike by pulling out of an international conference in Germany next week on Afghanistan, depriving the talks of a central player in efforts to bring peace to its neighbor. “Enough is enough. The government will not tolerate any incident of spilling even a single drop of any civilian or soldier’s blood,” The News newspaper today quoted Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar as telling a Senate committee on foreign affairs.

“Pakistan’s role in the war on terror must not be overlooked,” Khar said, suggesting Pakistan could end its support for the US war on militancy. Despite opposition at home, Islamabad backed Washington after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

In a development likely to exacerbate the crisis, two Pakistani men were killed in Afghanistan early today and Pakistani border guards said NATO may have been responsible. The officials said the two men, who were from the town of Chagai in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, were gathering wood 30 km inside Afghanistan and NATO choppers fired on their vehicle.

“I can confirm that the bodies of two residents of Chagai have arrived from Afghanistan,” said Chagai Assistant Commissioner Tufail Baloch. “But I do not have any information on how they were killed. It happened on Afghan soil so we don’t have many details yet.” NATO officials had no immediate comment. NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military border posts in northwest Pakistan on Saturday in the worst incident of its kind since 2001.

The top US military officer denied allegations by a senior Pakistani army official that the NATO attack was a deliberate act of aggression. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Reuters in an interview: “The one thing I will say publicly and categorically is that this was not a deliberate attack.”

The incident has given the army, which has ruled Pakistan for more than half of its history and sets security and foreign policy, some breathing room after facing strong criticism from both the Pakistani public and the United States after Osama bin Laden was killed in a secret raid by US special forces in May.

The al-Qaeda leader had apparently been living in a Pakistani garrison town for years. Pakistanis criticized the military for failing to protect their sovereignty and US officials wondered whether some members of military intelligence had sheltered him. Pakistan’s government and military said they had no idea bin Laden was in the country. Protests have taken place in several cities every day since the NATO strike along the poorly-defined border, where militants often plan and stage attacks.

Pakistan military sources said Islamabad had canceled a visit by a 15-member delegation, led by the Director General of the Joint Staff, Lieutenant-General Mohammad Asif, to the United States that was to have taken place this week.

Bomb blast in Peshawar

PESHAWAR: A bomb exploded near the office of a regional government official in the often restive northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar early on Thursday, police officials said, but there were no immediate reports of casualties. A wall of the district coordination officer’s building collapsed after the blast, which was heard throughout Peshawar, the last major city on the route to Afghanistan. Peshawar is also not far from Mohmand, the district where a strike by NATO-led forces at the weekend killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and plunged often uneasy relations between Washington and Islamabad to new lows. Taliban militants have often launched suicide attacks in and around Peshawar in their campaign to topple the Pakistani government for its support of the US-led war against militancy.