Americas

Home page

Americas

Pakistan helped lead US to bin Laden hideout: Clinton

02 May 2011 23:38 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Cooperation with Pakistan helped lead the United States to the hideout where Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday, APA reports quoting AFP.
The chief US diplomat played up Washington’s cooperation with Islamabad despite doubts she and other US officials have voiced in the past about Pakistani willingness to work with the United States to root out Al-Qaeda.
It is "important to note that our counter-terrorism cooperation over a number of years now with Pakistan contributed greatly to our efforts to dismantle Al-Qaeda," Clinton told reporters
"In fact, cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound in which he was hiding," Clinton said.
Doubts about Pakistan’s commitment to fighting Al-Qaeda were revived after US forces shot and killed Bin Laden in a heavily-fortified villa in the heart of Abbottabad, a garrison city two hours by road north of Islamabad.
But a senior US intelligence official said: "We have no indications that the Pakistanis were aware that Osama bin Laden was at the compound in Abbottabad."
Clinton stirred outrage during a visit to Pakistan in October 2009 when she took issue with Islamabad’s position that the Al-Qaeda leadership is not in Pakistan.
"Al-Qaeda has had safe haven in Pakistan since 2002," Clinton told senior Pakistani newspaper editors in the country’s cultural capital, Lahore.
"I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to," she added.
However, Clinton put the emphasis here Monday on the common cause made by both the United States and Pakistan.
"Bin Laden declared war on Pakistan a few years ago," she said, adding he "was an enemy of the United States and an enemy of Pakistan.
"It was important for us to work as closely as we could with our Pakistani counterparts and it remains so," Clinton said.
"We’re committed to this partnership, we think it is in the best interest of the security and safety of the United States," she said.
Analysts say elements of the Pakistani military and intelligence services want to keep links with both Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as they seem them as a buffer for arch-enemy India’s influence in Afghanistan once US forces pull out.