ISLAMABAD, Oct 24: While not denying explicitly that the previous government had endorsed drone attacks by the US, the Foreign Office on Thursday chose to speak only about the current administration, saying the government’s stance against drone attacks was very clear.

“Whatever understandings there may or may not have been in the past, the present government has been very clear regarding its policy on the issue,” Foreign Office spokesman Aizaz Chaudhry said while responding to a question regarding a Washington Post report that Pakistan government had been on board with regard to drone attacks, at least during the four-year period from 2007 to 2011.

The Post report said secret diplomatic memos and CIA documents leaked to it suggested a “secret arrangement” between the two countries on drone attacks.

Aizaz Chaudhry said the present government had been following a very consistent policy on drone strikes and had repeatedly called for their cessation.

A diplomat recalled that Foreign Office protestations during the period mentioned by the Post report always denounced the attacks, but never called for ending them.

US ambassadors had been summoned to the Foreign Office on a number of occasions during that period for receiving demarches over the strikes, but the demand for stopping the attacks had never been made.

The summoning of envoys was apparently about the shift in US strategy from targeting high-value Al Qaeda militants to going after gatherings of low-level fighters.

The first such demand, the diplomat recalled, was publicly made on April 15 this year after the PPP government had completed its tenure and when the caretaker government was in office.

Meanwhile, Husain Haqqani — Pakistan’s ambassador to the US during 2008-11 who has been named in the Post report as the official regularly briefed by deputy CIA chief Michael Morell on the strikes — told Dawn that the US government communicated the damage done by the strikes through him.

“The US government simply conveyed to the Pakistan government what it said were its assessment of damage from drone strikes in Pakistan. The US government insisted that the figure of civilian casualties reported in the Pakistan media were exaggerated and often fabricated,” Mr Haqqani said.

Sherry Rehman — who succeeded Mr Haqqani as the ambassador to US — said in a twitter post: “The drone strikes certainly did not happen with our consent when I was ambassador from Jan 2012 onwards.”

The FO spokesman said: “The present government has been very clear … we regard such strikes as violation of our sovereignty as well as international law.

“These are counter-productive. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in his first statement in the parliament reiterated his demand for an end to drone strikes.”

Mr Sharif raised the issue in his speech to the UN General Assembly last month and again took up the matter during his meeting with President Obama.

The spokesman further noted that a consensus against drones existed among political parties and the public.

An all-party conference convened by the government for developing consensus for tackling the issue of terrorism asked the government to take up the matter of drone attacks at the United Nations.