WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD, Dec 1, (Agencies): The top US military officer on Wednesday denied allegations by a senior army official in Islamabad that a NATO attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers was a deliberate act of aggression.
Islamabad has reacted angrily to the attack last weekend, which threatens to set back peace efforts in Afghanistan, by pulling out of an international conference in Germany next week on Afghanistan’s future. It stood by its decision on Wednesday despite German hopes to the contrary.
NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military border posts in northwest Pakistan on Saturday in the worst incident of its kind since Islamabad allied itself with Washington in 2001 in the war on militancy.
In comments carried in local newspapers on Wednesday that characterized the attack as blatant aggression, Major General Ishfaq Nadeem, Pakistan’s director general of military operations, 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 at an editors’ briefing at army headquarters on Tuesday.
But General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US 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.”
Speaking as he flew back to Washington after a trip to London, Dempsey said he was trying to discuss the incident with Pakistan behind closed doors.
“Candidly we don’t want to try to resolve this issue through the media. No offense,” he said.
Pakistan has resumed some cooperation with US-led forces in Afghanistan following NATO strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers by working with the coalition to prevent another cross-border incident from escalating, a spokesman says.
The weekend airstrikes have severely strained the already troubled relationship between Pakistan and the US, jeopardizing Washington’s hopes of enlisting Islamabad’s support in winding down the Afghan war.
Pakistan is still outraged by the soldiers’ deaths and has retaliated by closing its Afghan border crossings to NATO supplies, demanding the US vacate an air base used by American drones and boycotting an international conference aimed at stabilizing Afghanistan.
But 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-defense 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 on Wednesday 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.
The Pakistani military did not immediately respond to request for comment on the latest incident.
Pakistani and American officials have offered different accounts of how Nato aircraft attacked two Pakistan army posts before dawn Saturday. But it seems clear that a breakdown in communication contributed to the tragedy.
According to US military records described to The Associated Press, the incident occurred when a joint US and Afghan patrol requested backup after being hit by mortar and small arms fire by Taleban militants. Before responding, the joint US-Afghan patrol first checked with the Pakistani army, which reported it had no troops in the area, the military account said.
Pakistani officials have refuted this claim and said US forces must have known they were attacking Pakistani soldiers because the posts were clearly marked on maps given to Nato and the two sides were in contact immediately before and during the airstrikes.
Pentagon press secretary George Little disputed suggestions that the attack on the Pakistani troops was deliberate.
“In no way, shape or form should this be construed as an intentional attack on Pakistan by the United States. That is simply incorrect,” Little told reporters in Washington.