Islamabad: The Pakistani military on Monday rejected the regret expressed by the NATO chief for a cross-border air strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and warned that the action could have “grave consequences”. The regret expressed by NATO over the killing of the Pakistani soldiers is “not enough”, chief military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas said.
“The NATO strike can have grave consequences,” he said. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Sunday said he had written to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to express regret over the “tragic unintended incident”. In a statement, he said: “I have written… to make it clear that the deaths of Pakistani personnel are as unacceptable and deplorable as the deaths of Afghan and international personnel.”
Pakistan has reacted angrily to the killing of two dozen soldiers, including two officers, in the NATO air strike in Mohmand tribal region on the border with Afghanistan. It has closed all NATO supply routes and asked the US to vacate Shamsi airbase, believed to be used by CIA-operated drones.
However, Abbas said NATO’s expression of regret was inadequate.
“We think this is not enough and we do not accept it. Such raids have also been conducted in the past. Such attacks are unacceptable,” Abbas told BBC Urdu. Pointing out that 72 Pakistani soldiers were killed and nearly 250 injured in NATO strikes in three years, Abbas said the Pakistani leadership will decide whether more steps would be taken in reaction to the NATO strikes.
Pakistan says that NATO fighter planes and helicopters struck its border post in Mohmand trial region on Friday night and killed 24 soldiers and injured 13 others.
NATO sources have claimed that the air strike was carried out after its special mission was attacked from Pakistani soil. But Abbas rejected this claim and said NATO would have to clarify if any its personnel died due to an attack from the Pakistani side.
“It is ridiculous to find justification for NATO’s unprovoked attack through such notions,” Abbas said. When his attention was drawn to the NATO Secretary General’s statement that the strike was an accident, Abbas said this could be proved only after an investigation is completed. He said NATO representatives were informed when they started firing.
“The NATO representatives were told to immediately stop firing but the attacks continued,” he said. “When our people were martyred and NATO continued more firing, then the Pakistani troops had the right to respond to stop the NATO attacks,” he said.
The US, which depends on Pakistani supply routes for transporting about half the supplies needed by 130,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, has been trying to salvage the alliance by backing a full inquiry into the incident. The crisis has further strained US-Pakistan relations which have been reeling since the killing of Osama bin Laden in May.
Meanwhile, NATO and Afghan forces came under fire from across the Pakistan border before they called in a deadly airstrike on two Pakistani military posts that left 24 soldiers dead, media reports quoted Afghan and western officials as saying.
As Pakistan simmered over the killings, Wall Street Journal quoted US officials in Kabul as saying that insurgents may have been firing into Afghanistan near the Pakistani border which prompted coalition forces to strike back. The account challenges Islamabad’s claims that the attacks, which have plunged US-Pakistan ties to new lows, were unprovoked and risked stoking fresh tensions as the incident has left US-Pakistan relations in tatters. Afghan officials working in the border area where the attack took place said that the joint forces was targetting Taliban militants in the area when it received fire from the Pakistani military outpost. That prompted the coalition forces to call for an air attack on the Pakistani forces, the Afghan officials said and also claimed that Pakistani officials were informed of the operation before it took place.
“There was firing coming from the position against Afghan army soldiers who requested support and this is what happened,” WSJ quoted an Afghan official as saying as the top US commander Gen. John Allen held a meeting in Kabul to discuss the incident.
The Afghan officials said the government believes that the fire came from the Pakistani base and not from insurgents operating nearby. A view bolstered by a western official who also said that coalition forces were fired on from a Pakistani army base. (PTI)