US-Pakistan relations are hanging by a thread after the NATO strike Pakistan might withdraw its support for the US-led war on militancy if its sovereignty is violated again, the foreign minister suggested in comments published on Thursday. The NATO cross-border strike that left 24 Pakistani soldiers dead and 13 wounded has caused a diplomatic crisis with Pakistan's goverment, media and public furious at the attack.
The South Asian nation, instrumental in the US's Afghanistan efforts, already expressed its fury by pulling out of an international conference in Germany next week on Afghanistan.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai telephoned Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Tuesday to urge him to reconsider a boycott of the Bonn conference over a deadly Nato strike, officials in both countries said. Pakistan however stood by its decision on Wednesday, depriving the talks of a central player in efforts to bring peace to its neighbour.
"Enough is enough. The government will not tolerate any incident of spilling even a single drop of any civilian or soldier's blood," The News newspaper quoted Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar as telling a Senate committee on foreign affairs.
"Pakistan's role in the war on terror must not be overlooked," Khar said, suggesting Pakistan could end its support for the US war on militancy. Despite opposition at home, Islamabad backed Washington after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
The United Arab Emirates demanded that NATO apologise to Pakistan for the deaths. UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, who recently returned from an unscheduled visit to Pakistan to meet its leadership, said: “This is a mistake that we cannot accept. Anyone who loves Pakistan cannot justify it.”
Pakistani Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar on Wednesday also said Pakistan would not compromise on its security and sovereignty and regain control of the US-held Shamsi Airbase, according to the deadline. “We will take over the Shamsi base on December 11 in any case and no drone will be allowed to fly from here after the deadline,” he said in a statement to journalists.
The minister said Pakistan did not want conflict with US but could not tolerate attacks on its sovereignity.
He said that Pakistan would review other agreements with the US in different sectors and all decisions would be taken in the "supreme interest of the country".
Pakistan military sources also said it had cancelled a visit by a 15-member delegation, led by the Director General of the Joint Staff, Lieutenant-General Mohammad Asif, to the United States that was to have taken place this week.
However, NATO said Islamabad communicated with the alliance to prevent an exchange of fire over the border late Tuesday from turning into another international incident.
US forces received mortar and recoilless rifle fire from an area just inside the Pakistan border, said US spokesman Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Badura. US forces returned fire in self-defence while confirming with the Pakistani military that it wasn’t involved. No damage or casualties were reported by the US or Pakistan, he said.
German Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a NATO spokesman in Kabul, expressed hope that Pakistan’s cooperation in resolving the incident in eastern Afghanistan’s Paktia province signaled the two sides could recover from the recent tragedy.
“We are continuing operations and it is of great importance that the incidents of Saturday, as tragic as they were, do not disrupt our capability to operate in the border area and cooperate with the Pakistani side,” said Jacobson.
NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military border posts in northwest Pakistan on Saturday in the worst incident of its kind since 2001.
Details are still sketchy about what happened in the early morning hours, but Pakistani military sources said the attack came in two waves.
"The attack began at around 12:05am and lasted for about 30 minutes, when the contacts were made and it was discontinued," said one source.
The source said NATO helicopter gunships and jet fighters came back after 35 minutes. The Pakistanis returned fire in a battle that lasted for another 45 minutes.
When it was over, 24 Pakistani soldiers were dead and 13 wounded.
The two posts in question - Volcano and Boulder - are perched about 8,000 feet high on a ridgeline near the Afghan border. They are among about 28 such posts in Mohmand Agency set up to prevent cross-border movements by Taliban miltants, another military source said.
The source said that there were no militants in the area, however, because they had been flushed out by a Pakistani military operation conducted over the year.
A senior Pakistani army official earlier said the NATO air attack was a deliberate, blatant act of aggression.
In a briefing to editors carried in local newspapers on Wednesday, Major-General Ishfaq Nadeem, director general of military operations, also said NATO forces were alerted they were attacking Pakistani posts, but helicopters kept firing.
“Detailed information of the posts was already with ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), including map references, and it was impossible that they did not know these to be our posts,” The News quoted Nadeem as saying in the briefing held at army headquarters on Tuesday.
Nadeem said that minutes before the first attack, a US sergeant on duty at a communications centre in Afghanistan told a Pakistani major that NATO special forces were receiving indirect fire from a location 15 km (9 miles) from the posts.
The Pakistanis said they needed time to check and asked for coordinates. Seven minutes later, the sergeant called back and said “your Volcano post has been hit,” Nadeem quoted the sergeant as saying.
Nadeem concluded that the communication confirmed NATO knew the locations of the Pakistani posts before attacking, said The News.
A Western official and an Afghan security official who requested anonymity said NATO troops were responding to fire from across the border. Pakistan said earlier the attack was unprovoked.
Both the Western and Pakistani explanations are possibly correct: that a retaliatory attack by NATO troops took a tragic, mistaken turn in harsh terrain where differentiating friend from foe can be difficult.
Nadeem was adamant that all communications channels had informed NATO that it was attacking Pakistani positions.
“They continued regardless, with impunity,” The News quoted him as saying.
A top US military officer denied allegations by a senior Pakistani army official that the NATO attack was a deliberate act of aggression.
General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Reuters in an interview: "The one thing I will say publicly and categorically is that this was not a deliberate attack.
The army, which has ruled Pakistan for more than half of its history and sets security and foreign policy, faced strong criticism from both the Pakistani public and the United States after Osama bin Laden was killed in a secret raid by US special forces in May.
The Al-Qaeda leader had apparently been living in a Pakistani garrison town for years.
Pakistanis criticised the military for failing to protect their sovereignty and US officials wondered whether some members of military intelligence had sheltered him. Pakistan's government and military said they had no idea Bin Laden was in the country.
The army seems to have regained its confidence and won the support of the public and the government in a country where anti-American sentiment often runs high.
Protests have taken place in several cities every day since the NATO strike along the poorly-defined border, where militants often plan and stage attacks.
In an apparently unrelated attack, a bomb blew out a wall of a government official's office in Peshawar, the last big city on the route to Afghanistan, early on Thursday, police said. There were no reports of casualties.
The United States has long wanted Pakistan, whose military and economy depend heavily on billions of dollars in American aid, to crack down on militant groups that cross its unruly border to attack Western forces in Afghanistan.
More recently, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked Pakistan to bring all militant groups to the negotiating table in order to stabiilise Afghanistan.
The NATO attack makes Pakistani cooperation less likely.
NATO hopes an investigation it promised will defuse the crisis and that confidence-building measures can repair ties.
Officials said on Tueday that a US-led investigation into the NATO air strike is to report its initial findings by December 23.
The chief of US Central Command, which oversees US forces in Afghanistan and the Middle East, appointed Brigadier General Stephen Clark, a one-star air force general, to lead the investigation, the US military announced
But the army is firmly focused on the NATO attack, and analysts say it is likely to take advantage of the widespread anger to press its interests in any future peace talks on Afghanistan.
Pakistan says it has paid the highest price of any country engaged in the war on militancy. Thousands of soldiers and police have been killed.
Critics allege Pakistan has created a deadly regional mess by supporting militants like the Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani network to act as proxies in Afghanistan and other groups to fight Indian forces in the disputed Kashmir region.