Senior politicians vow to review ties to America after discord over drone attacks and assassination of al-Qaida leader
Nato tankers burn in the northern town of Pindi Gheb, Pakistan, after an attack. There are fears that convoys will face a greater threat in future. Photograph: Mian Khursheed/Reuters
Declan Walsh
Guardian [UK]
14 May 2011
The security of Nato‘s main supply line into Afghanistan came under threat on Saturday as Pakistani parliamentarians voted to review all aspects of their relationship with the US amid worsening political fallout from the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The unanimous motion was passed in the early hours of Saturday morning at the conclusion of an extraordinary 10-hour parliamentary session when the military’s top brass offered apologies and admissions of failure, and the country’s spy chief offered to resign.
Condemning the 2 May raid on bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad, 35 miles northeast of Islamabad, as a “violation of Pakistan‘s sovereignty”, parliament voted unanimously to review the country’s terms of engagement with Washington.
In feisty speeches lawmakers warned against further “unilateral action”, including CIA drone strikes, and urged the government to consider cutting the Nato supply line that runs from Karachi to Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass and Balochistan.
Suspicious of Pakistan’s failure to capture bin Laden but recognising the importance of the supply line and pursuing other al-Qaida fugitives, the Obama administration is dispatching Senator John Kerry – the “good cop” of US diplomacy with Pakistan – to Islamabad on Sunday.
“We’re not trying to find a way to break the relationship apart, we’re trying to find a way to build it,” he told reporters in Kabul on Saturday.
Read the rest of the article at the Guardian.
H/T Michael Yon on Facebook
