US questions Imran on drone opposition

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf Chairman Imran Khan has said that US authorities detained and questioned him at a Canadian airport last week.
Imran, a former cricket star, led a march to South Waziristan Agency earlier this month to protest drone strikes, which he says end up killing more civilians than militants.
Imran said he boarded a New York-bound plane in Toronto on Friday when two US immigration officials asked him to step outside. The officials made him wait for about 40 minutes before interviewing him for another 20 minutes, he said. “I kept asking them what was this all about, and then one guy interviewed me and he was so confused, he had no idea what he was saying,” Imran Khan told CNN over the phone from Seattle, another stop on his trip. “He was talking about some fund-raising, so I asked him to come to the point, and he said, ‘We’re worried you might use violence against drones.’ I mean, it was so ridiculous, I didn’t even know how to answer it.”
He missed his flight, but eventually made it to New York, and later Seattle, for fund-raisers for his political party. He had two more fund-raisers on the schedule, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, before he returned to Pakistan, Imran said. Imran believed the US officials simply wanted to make him miss an anti-drone protest he was scheduled to lead in the US, without realising the protest had already been postponed because of the Muslim holiday of Eidul Azha. A State Department official acknowledged that Imran Khan was “briefly delayed” before boarding the next flight to the US. “The issue was resolved,” the official said. “Mr Khan is welcome in the United States.”
The PTI chief has been a fierce critic of US policy in Pakistan and the use of drone strikes, calling them a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and a strategy that stokes militant anger toward Washington. Imran said he would continue his campaign against drone strikes in Pakistani Tribal Areas, despite American objections. “Drone attacks must stop,” he said at an event later, pointing out that innocent Pakistani lives were being lost. He said he also told them that those who supported the drone strikes were not friends of the US. “My stand on drones is very clear. I did not say sorry to them,” he told reporters after arriving in New York. “I still couldn’t understand why they did this. The official was questioning me about drones but I think he himself didn’t understand what he was talking about,” he added.