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Pakistan says not part of US operation

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-05-03 20:22

File photo: Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari looks on as US President Barack Obama makes a statement to reporters at the White House in Washington, in this May 6, 2009. The killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces was not a joint operation with Pakistan, the president of Pakistan said in an opinion column published on Monday. Zardari, writing in the Washington Post, also dismissed any notion that Pakistan was failing to take action against militants on its territory. The president said the whereabouts of the al Qaeda leader, killed in a town some two hours north of Islamabad, were not known to the Pakistani authorities.p[Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON/ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan's president acknowledged for the first time on Tuesday that his security forces were left out of a US operation to kill Osama bin Laden, but he did little to dispel questions over how the al Qaeda leader was able to live in comfort near Islamabad.

The revelation that bin Laden had holed up in a compound in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, possibly for years, prompted many US lawmakers to demand a review of the billions of dollars in aid Washington gives to nuclear-armed Pakistan.

"He was not anywhere we had anticipated he would be, but now he is gone," Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post, without offering further defence against accusations his security services should have known where bin Laden was hiding.

"Although the events of Sunday were not a joint operation, a decade of cooperation and partnership between the United States and Pakistan led up to the elimination of Osama bin Laden as a continuing threat to the civilized world."

It was the first substantive public comment by any Pakistani civilian or military leader on the airborne raid by US special forces on bin Laden's compound in the early hours of Monday.

Pakistan has faced enormous international scrutiny since bin Laden was killed, with questions over whether its military and intelligence agencies were too incompetent to catch him or knew all along where he was hiding.

White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan told a briefing that Pakistan was not informed of the raid until after all US aircraft were out of Pakistani airspace.

Irate US lawmakers wondered how it was possible for bin Laden to live in a populated area near a military training academy without anyone in authority knowing about it.

They said it was time to review aid to Pakistan. The US Congress has approved $20 billion for Pakistan in direct aid and military reimbursements partly to help Islamabad fight militancy since bin Laden masterminded the September 11, 2001 attacks.