WASHINGTON, Jan 31: US President Barack Obama has confirmed that unmanned aircraft that regularly strike suspected militant targets in Pakistan’s tribal areas are launched by the United States and that the drones reach the areas the Pakistani army cannot.

Until now, US officials had refused to discuss the issue in public.

“Obviously, a lot of these strikes have been in the Fata and going after Al Qaeda suspects, who are up in very tough terrain along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said. “We are able to pinpoint strike on Al Qaeda operative in a place where the capacities of that military in that country may not be able to get them.”

President Obama made the comments in a “virtual interview” that was conducted via Google+ and YouTube, with hundreds of thousands of questions submitted online. Five individuals were selected to participate in the online “hangout with the president”.

This was not the first time that President Obama or other US senior officials were asked about drones. But in the past, they refused to answer questions about the drones, saying that they could not discuss “intelligence matters”. In social conversations, US officials indicated that the United States and Pakistan had an arrangement, which required America to carry out the attacks quietly. The arrangement allowed Pakistan to protest the attacks in the media but in meetings with US officials, Pakistan rarely raised this issue.

Diplomatic observers in Washington see the Obama administration’s decision to publicly own up the drone attacks against the backdrop of the ongoing negotiations between the two countries on drawing a new contract for bilateral ties.

Pakistan launched a parliamentary review of its relationship with the US after the Nov 26 Nato raid on its military posts killed 24 soldiers. The US, upset by Osama bin Laden’s discovery in a Pakistani garrison town, has welcomed the review, indicating that it too wanted a new arrangement. Earlier this week, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta urged Pakistan to release a physician who had helped the CIA trace Bin Laden in Abbottabad. Diplomatic observers say that Washington wants an understanding on issues like the drone strikes in the new arrangement.

“For us to be able to get them in another way would involve probably a lot more intrusive military actions than the one that we’re already engaging in,” said Mr Obama while explaining why the US would continue to use the drones to target militants.

“I think that we have to be judicious in how we use drones,” Mr Obama said, adding that they had been used for “very precise, precision strikes against Al Qaeda and their affiliates”.

He assured those who believed that the drones were being used indiscriminately that “this thing is kept on a very tight leash” and the US did not use drones “willy nilly” but in a way that avoided more intrusive military actions.

The drones, he noted, had been very successful in eradicating terrorist hideouts. “And obviously, I’m looking forward to a time where Al Qaeda is no longer operative network and we can refocus a lot of our assets and attention on other issues,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be careful about how we proceed on this. But this is something that we’re still having to deal with, there’s still active plots that are directed against the United States,” he said.

President Obama also made it clear that the US was not planning to discontinue the drones strike in the near future.

“I think we are on the offensive now. Al Qaeda’s been really weakened, but we’ve still got a little more work to do, and we’ve got to make sure that we’re using all our capacities in order to deal with it,” he said.

The US media noted that President Obama had begun to move away from his cautious avoidance of the subject in the past, since he had begun to shift into campaign mode in 2012, noted the L. A. Times.

In his statement on Monday, Mr Obama echoed the arguments of Pentagon and CIA officials, who often make the point in private discussions that the drones can perform targeted strikes and thereby substantially reduce the potential for civilian casualties associated with high-altitude bombing.

But Mr Obama went well beyond that as he took issue with a Monday story in the New York Times, which reported that the State Department was operating a small fleet of surveillance drones to protect US embassies, consulates and personnel stationed in Iraq following the withdrawal of American troops.

Some Iraqi officials are angry about the programme and see it as a violation of their sovereignty, according to the Times report. But Mr Obama said the US still respected the sovereignty of other nations even as it used drones within their borders.

“The truth of the matter is, we’re not engaging in a bunch of drone attacks inside of Iraq,” Mr Obama said. “There’s some surveillance to make sure that our embassy compound is protected.” During Monday’s mass interview, one of the participants asked Mr Obama: “Why are we sending money to places like Pakistan that are known to give money to terrorism?”

“Pakistan is one where our relations have gotten more strained because there are a lot of extremists inside that country and either for lack of capacity or political will, they haven’t taken them all on. In some cases, they’ve been very cooperative with us. In other cases, not as much as we want,” Mr Obama said.

“So we’re always trying to find the right balance, making sure that if we’re providing them with aid, they’re also providing us with assistance in terms of making our people safer and there are times where they disappoint us in terms of their performance. But we’re going to keep on trying to engage as many countries as possible, mainly because it’s good for our national security.”