Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on Thursday said Pakistan had not been “complicit” in sheltering Osama bin Laden and said the fact the late al Qaeda leader was able to live undetected for so long in Pakistan was down to a universal “intelligence failure”.
In an interview with British daily the Guardian, Gilani rejected claims Pakistan had secretly known Osama was living in Abbottabad. “There is no complicity. I think it’s an intelligence failure from all over the world,” Gilani said, who is in London on a five-day official visit to the Untied Kingdom.
He denied suggestions that elements within Pakistan’s military might have been aware of bin Laden’s hideout. He added: “Why should we do that? We have suffered the most.” Asked if Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, might be in the country, the prime minister replied: “I don’t know. Please tell us. The CIA is far more powerful than Pakistan’s ISI service, and should have a better idea.”
Gilani said Pakistan was “part of the solution, not part of the problem” when it came to the global issue of fighting terrorism. “Osama bin Laden wasn’t a Pakistani,” he pointed out. The prime minister said the US had fuelled the problem by abandoning its ally Pakistan once the Soviets had been driven from Afghanistan. “The vacuum was filled by militants,” he said. Gilani also made clear that his country had been the biggest loser in the two decades of war and turmoil in Afghanistan and from the growing menace of Islamist extremism at home. “Pakistan has paid a huge price. Some 35,000 people have been martyred. 5,000 police and soldiers have been killed.” In addition, Pakistan was now “catering for the needs” of 3.6 million Afghan refugees, he said.
Gilani was upbeat about relations with Washington, which have been under severe strain since US-led NATO forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November. He admitted recent relations with the Obama administration hadn’t been too normal, but said the CIA and ISI were still working hard together to achieve, as he put it, as high-level targets. But he pointed out it was practically impossible to police the mountainous Afghan-Pakistan border, where thousands crossed every day. “We don’t know if they are tourists or militants,” he said. The prime minister said Islamabad supported political reconciliation in Afghanistan as long as it was “Afghan-owned and Afghan-led”.
He spoke warmly of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, saying Islamabad was serious about resolving all core issues with India, including Kashmir and the heavily militarized Siachen glacier, where 139 Pakistani soldiers were tragically buried in an avalanche last month.
Gilani says Pakistan not ‘complicit’ in sheltering Osama bin Laden
