WASHINGTON, May 10, (Agencies): US President Barack Obama ordered that the team sent to raid Osama bin Laden’s compound be large enough to fight off Pakistani forces should they intervene, the New York Times reported.
Citing unnamed officials, the paper said Obama raised the prospect of a clash 10 days before the May 1 raid, resulting in an extra two fighter helicopters being sent to protect the commandos raiding the compound.
“Some people may have assumed we could talk our way out of a jam, but given our difficult relationship with Pakistan right now, the president did not want to leave anything to chance,” it quoted a senior official as saying.
“He wanted extra forces if they were necessary.”
The Times also reported that two teams of specialists were on standby for the mission: one to bury the al-Qaeda leader if he were killed, and another made up of lawyers, interrogators and translators in case he was captured.
It said the latter team was likely aboard the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in the North Arabian Sea.
Bin Laden was buried at sea after he was shot dead in the raid, officials have said.
The latest revelations come at a time of heightened tensions between the two military allies, with Pakistan slamming the US operation and denying what it called “absurd” allegations that it was sheltering the world’s most wanted man.
Islamabad has also vowed to retaliate against any similar operations.
Washington in turn has emphatically refused to say sorry for taking out its enemy Number 1, blamed for masterminding the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in which almost 3,000 people were killed.
The United States was hoping on Tuesday to question the detained three wives of Osama bin Laden although Pakistani officials played down the possibility of any speedy access, saying no decision had been made.
US investigators, who have been sifting through a huge stash of material seized on May 2 after US special forces killed bin Laden in his Pakistani hideout, want to question his wives as they seek to trace his movements and his network.
A Pakistani decision to allow US investigators to question the women could begin to stabilise relations between the allies that have been severely strained by the killing of the al-Qaeda leader.
A US official said in Washington on Monday Pakistan appeared ready to grant access to the wives who were detained by Pakistani authorities at bin Laden’s compound after the raid.
But Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said it had received no US request while other officials said no decision had been taken.
“It’s too early to even think about it,” said a senior government official, adding that Pakistani investigators had yet to finish their own questioning.
Pakistan says the wives, one from Yemen and two from Saudi Arabia, and their children, will be repatriated. Pakistan was making contacts with their countries but they had yet to say they would take them, the Pakistani official said.
Real allies
US House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday that the United States and Pakistan must decide whether they are “real allies” in the fight against Islamist extremists after Osama bin Laden’s death.
“I do trust them, but I think it’s a moment when we need to look each other in the eye and decide, are we real allies? Are we going to work together?” Boehner, the top Republican in the US Congress, told NBC television.
“And if we are, you’re either all in or you’re not in,” said the lawmaker, who echoed concerns about how the al-Qaeda leaders was able to live unperturbed for years just a stone’s throw from a top Pakistani military academy.
“Clearly there are questions that remain about what they knew or didn’t know about bin Laden being in their country. There are certainly some questions about their willingness to pursue some terrorists, but maybe not others,” he said.
Still, Boehner said that when he looks at Pakistan “I see an ally” of the United States and called Islamabad “a real asset when it comes to fighting the war on terror.”
“Let’s never forget that Pakistan has lost more troops and more individuals than we have here in America. So they’ve been an ally. They’ve been helpful. But there are questions, and I don’t think we ought to have questions,” he said.
“If we’re going to really be allies and we’re going to fight this war together, we need to be in it together all the time,” said the speaker, who is second in line for the presidency after Vice President Joe Biden.
Boehner recently returned from a trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf denied Tuesday that his administration struck an agreement with the United States years ago to let American special forces kill or capture Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan.
The denial follows a report in a British newspaper that Washington and Islamabad reached a secret deal nearly a decade ago allowing the US to conduct operations against bin Laden and two other top al-Qaeda leaders on Pakistani soil.
“Pervez Musharraf has seen a media report, and let me make it clear that no such agreement had been signed during his tenure,” said Musharraf’s spokesman, Fawad Chaudhry. “Also, there was no verbal understanding.”
Videogame
Images of the Pakistani compound where Osama bin Laden made his final stand have been turned into a videogame battleground.
A software map named fy_abbottabad in reference to the city where a US military team killed the infamous al-Qaeda leader in a May 2 raid was available Monday as a setting for play in online computer shooter game “Counter-Strike.”
The map program described as a creation by “Fletch” had been downloaded more than 6,400 times from gamebanana.com website as of late Monday.
The setting is a virtual version of the compound where bin Laden was shot dead in the raid by US Navy SEALs, but does not feature interiors of buildings. Players battle it out on the grounds of the compound.
Fletch dismissed some online criticism that the bin Laden slaying was too fresh to be made light of in a videogame.
“What a lot of people don’t seem to understand is that the only thing this map has in common with Osama is location,” Fletch said in a blog post at gamebanana.com.
“I can see how people would think it is in bad taste, but honestly if that’s your opinion you may as well protest the whole game (as well as many others).”
US Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein charged Monday that slain al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden could not have lived as he did in Pakistan without some official “complicity.”
“I just don’t believe it was done without some form of complicity,” Feinstein told reporters as she delivered a stark and scathing warning to the troubled US ally to do more to battle Islamist extremists or risk souring ties.
“I think either we’re going to be allies in fighting terror, or the relationship makes less and less sense to me,” said the senator, who indicated she foresaw cuts in billions in US aid absent a course correction in Islamabad.
While some US lawmakers have called for stepping up help to Pakistan, “I feel a little differently,” said Feinstein who complained that “we provide funds, we try to help the government wherever we can” and get little in return.
“It’s becoming increasingly problematic,” she said. “I thoroughly agree with the administration’s request that Pakistan take a good look at what the support services were for bin Laden.”
Feinstein said it was “incomprehensible” that bin Laden could live unperturbed for six years in “a military community” in Pakistan before the May 2 raid in which elite US commandos shot dead the elusive al-Qaeda leader.
While Pakistan has denied knowingly allowing the world’s most hunted man to live in relative luxury, “I just don’t believe it,” said Feinstein, who stressed “that level of complicity is really a problem.”
Fight
Western governments must work with Pakistan to increase the fight against Islamic extremists on its border with Afghanistan, despite questions raised by the killing of al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil, NATO’s secretary general said on Monday.
Adding his voice to the security debate following the May 2 killing of bin Laden by US commandos in a northern Pakistani town, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he saw “no alternative” to cooperating with Pakistan in the war against terrorism.
In a speech to the World Affairs Council in Atlanta, the head of the 28-nation Western military alliance expressed appreciation for the efforts so far by Pakistan’s military to fight Islamic militants in its border region with Afghanistan.
“But I think more could be done,” Rasmussen said.
“We should support those forces in Pakistan that realize that the real threat against the Pakistani society comes from terrorism and extremism,” he added.
Rasmussen spoke after Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani rejected allegations that the killing of bin Laden near Islamabad showed Pakistani incompetence or complicity in hiding the al-Qaeda leader.
The NATO secretary general acknowledged the revelation that bin Laden apparently had been hiding in Pakistan for several years raised “a lot of questions that have to be answered.”
But he said he was confident Pakistan’s own government was interested in finding convincing answers to these questions.
“My bottom line is that we need strong cooperation with Pakistan. If we are to assure long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan and beyond, then we need positive engagement with Pakistan,” Rasmussen said.
Pakistan or other countries may not have much to learn from the wreckage of a “stealth” US helicopter used in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, a defense analyst said Monday.
The helicopter went down in a hard landing during last week’s raid that killed bin Laden, and US Navy commandos destroyed the chopper before departing the residence in Abbottabad, north of Islamabad.
CIA Director Leon Panetta and other officials have said that Blackhawk helicopters were used in the operation but photographs of the wreckage have fueled intense speculation that the aircraft was altered — or was an entirely new model — to reduce noise and avoid detection by radar.
“The helicopter is a modified Blackhawk that is designed to maximize the chance for surprise in conducting special operations,” said Loren Thompson, an aerospace analyst and head of the Lexington Institute.
But he said that the technology and design features to enable an aircraft to reduce noise and evade radar are not shrouded in secrecy.
Countries that examine the wreckage “will not learn much from the remnants of the exploded helicopter that were not already readily available in open literature,” Thompson told AFP.
“The techniques of achieving low maneuverability, or stealth as it’s popularly known, are fairly well understood.”
Both professional and amateur aviation experts are poring over online photos of the damaged helicopter, which show a tail section with a different design than a standard MH-60 Blackhawk.
A helicopter with stealth features would have helped the American special forces’ team avoid detection by the Pakistanis, who were not informed of the Bin Laden raid in advance.
The helicopter appears to have at least five blades in its tail rotor, instead of the four associated with the Blackhawk, which analysts said could possibly allow for a slower rotor speed to reduce noise.