Washington, May 04: CIA director Leon Panetta says the US did not inform Pakistani authorities about the raid against Osama bin Laden since they feared Islamabad might disrupt the mission.
“It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission. They might alert the targets,” Bloomberg quoted Panetta as saying on Tuesday.
US President Barack Obama announced on Sunday that the al-Qaeda leader was killed in a military attack on a compound in Abbottabad in northeastern Pakistan.
The operation has spawned severe criticism from the Pakistani government.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry issued a statement slamming the US for carrying out the operation that killed bin Laden after Washington acknowledged it was “without prior information or authorization from the government of Pakistan.”
US officials have suggested that the Pakistani government knew where bin Laden was hiding because he lived close to a military camp near Islamabad for several years.
Washington says Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had attacked the house, where bin Laden was killed yesterday, in 2003 in the hunt for a top al-Qaeda member and thus knew the place was a hideout for the group.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has rejected the charges as “baseless.”
The reciprocal criticisms seem to have deepened tensions between Pakistan and the US.
American lawmakers say they may consider reducing the annual US aid to Pakistan if it turns out that Islamabad was aware of bin Laden’s whereabouts.
In 2009, the US approved a package of USD 7.5 billion in civilian and military aid to be paid to Pakistan during a period of five years.
——–Agencies