US presses Pakistan on Bin Laden
8 May 2011 Last updated at 15:07 GMT
Pakistan has denied knowing Bin Laden was holed up in Abbottabad
8 May 2011 Last updated at 15:07 GMT
Pakistan has denied knowing Bin Laden was holed up in AbbottabadThe White House has called on Pakistan to investigate the network that sustained Osama Bin Laden in his secret compound where he was killed last week.
But National Security Adviser Tom Donilon told NBC TV he had not seen any proof that the government in Islamabad knew the al-Qaeda leader's whereabouts.
Mr Donilon also said the US wanted to speak to Bin Laden's three widows, who are in Pakistani custody.
Pakistan has denied knowing Bin Laden was holed up in Abbottabad.
But Mr Donilon said Islamabad needed to establish how the al-Qaeda leader had lived for six years a short drive from the capital and right next to a military academy.
'Ridiculous'"There was some support network in Abbottabad, Pakistan, with the support of Bin Laden," Mr Donilon told NBC's Sunday talk show Meet The Press.
"We haven't seen evidence that the government knew about that. But they need to investigate that."
Three of Bin Laden's wives and 13 children were removed from the house following the US commando raid, which killed the al-Qaeda leader, one of his sons and three others.
Mr Donilon said the Pakistani authorities "need to provide us with intelligence... from the compound that they've gathered, including access to Osama Bin Laden's three wives".
The US has been poring over computer files seized by American special forces from the hideout.
"It's [the intelligence cache] about the size, the CIA tells us, of a small college library," said Mr Donilon.
On Saturday, the Pentagon released five home videos found among the material featuring Bin Laden, with the audio removed.
It included a video message by the al-Qaeda leader to the US and footage of Bin Laden watching an item about himself on TV.
US officials said the Abbottabad hideout was a command and control centre from where Bin Laden had actively led al-Qaeda.
But an unidentified senior Pakistani intelligence official told Reuters news agency on Sunday: "It sounds ridiculous. It doesn't sound like he was running a terror network."
There have been suspicions that someone in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency, which has a long history of contacts with militant groups, may have known where Bin Laden was hiding.
But Pakistan has dismissed such suggestions.
Meanwhile, a senior United Nations official called on the White House to disclose what orders were given to the US Navy Seals who went into the al-Qaeda chief's compound.
UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions Christof Heyns told the BBC the killing could set a precedent where any country could cross borders to pursue enemies "where there is in practical terms no option to capture".
"And are we not then on a slippery slope to say that the whole world is a battlefield?"
(source:bbc.co.uk)
=================================================
No comments:
Post a Comment