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WASHINGTON: US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta said on Monday that like others in the Obama administration he too believed the top Pakistani leadership was unaware of Osama bin Laden's whereabouts despite new evidence showing that the Al Qaeda chief lived in the country for nine years after 9/11.
In an interview to CBC television, Mr Panetta, however, said he believed some “lower rank” people in the military might have known where Bin Laden was hiding.
“Well, you know, these situations sometimes, the leadership within Pakistan [sic] is obviously not aware of certain things and yet people lower down in the military establishment find it very well, they've been aware of it,” the US defence secretary said.
“But bottom line is that we have not had evidence that provides that direct link.”
Mr Panetta also expressed a keen interest in reviving US relations with Pakistan.
Noting that the relationship had gone through “ups and downs” since January last year, Mr Panetta said: “We're actually in a period now, after coming out of a couple of incidents, where they're interested and we're interested in trying to put this back on track.”
The two sides, he noted, were now “making some progress, trying to reopen the blocks, the portals for our supplies. We're making some good progress with regards to cross-border operations. They are taking some steps to go after terrorists”.
“So, slowly but surely we're trying to get things back in the right place, to try to ensure that both of us are working against terrorism.”
Secretary Panetta said that both the US and Pakistan had analysed the material recovered from Bin Laden's compound “but I have not heard any kind of evidence that involved a direct connection to the Pakistanis”.
He added: “Obviously the concern has always been, how Bin Laden could be in an area where there were military establishments, where we could see the military operating and not have them know?”
Mr Panetta acknowledged that this was and “always will be” a complex relationship. “In some ways we share a common concern and a common threat.”
Pakistan, he noted, had lost “an awful lot of lives” because of terrorism” and that's why it continued to conduct military operations against the terrorists.
“So in many ways we have common cause, but the problem is that they view their position in that part of the world as one that is threatened,” he said.
The Pakistanis feel “threatened by India, threatened by others, threatened by some of the terrorists, threatened by the concern about how they're going to be viewed in that region, what kind of position are they going to have for the future,” Mr Panetta added.
“And as a result of that, sometimes we get very mixed messages from Pakistan as to just exactly where they're going to be. We've had ups and downs.”But Mr Panetta said that he believed it was “an absolutely essential relationship” if both sides continued to purse the militants.
“Frankly, you can't really have peace in Afghanistan until we've been able to ensure that we have peace in Pakistan with regard to the terrorists,” he added.
Mr Panetta said the US did not share its plan to raid the Bin Laden compound with Pakistan because in the past whenever the US shared such information, “unfortunately, for one way or another, it got leaked” to the individuals they were trying to go after. “So as a result of that we were concerned that if we were going to perform a sensitive mission like this, we had to do it on our own.”
