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ISLAMABAD: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti admitted here on Monday that his government was out of the loop as far as the Abbottabad operation was concerned.
Talking to reporters outside the Supreme Court premises, he said: “Our police only came to know about the incident when a huge blast was heard around 1.15a.m. When police personnel rushed to spot, it was already cordoned off by the army.”
He also admitted that the provincial administration was neither consulted nor it was taken into confidence before the get-Osama operation, telling the media persons to “wait for the Inter Services Public Relations briefing”.
Meanwhile, various opposition parties reacted differently to the killing of Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz saying that Pakistan would need to revisit and reshape its strategy in the fight against terrorism.
“PML-N condemns terrorism in its every form and manifestation and feels that the successive dictatorial regimes sowed the seeds of extremism and terrorism which resulted in rampant violence and bloodshed in the country and negatively affected image of Pakistan,” a party leader told Dawn .
The party however made it clear that only Pakistani institutions had the right to take any action on its soil and any foreign country's action inside Pakistani territory was infringement of our sovereignty.
The foreign office had earlier said: “The Unites States had done according to its stated policy that it will kill its enemies wherever they are found.”
“The 9/11 attack in the US started terrorism at international level in which thousands of Pakistani citizens were killed in suicide attacks,” the statement further said.
Meanwhile, Imran Khan, chairman Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf, said that the killing of Osama bin Laden may provide an opportunity to the US to declare symbolic victory, but it will not end terrorism as long as outstanding political issues and injustices were nor resolved in the region and elsewhere in the world.
He said that the Abbottabad operation was still shrouded in mystery as a number of critical questions remained unanswered. He said under whose authority and under what law were the US special forces allowed to conduct a major operation deep inside Pakistan as claimed by the US president?
Was this a joint operation or the Pakistani authorities acted as mere bystanders in their own country and if OBL was indeed located inside a compound in Abbottabadm, why Pakistan's security agencies did not take action and instead allowed the US to breach our sovereignty, he further asked.
He demanded US pullout from Afghanistan and from region to help re-establish peace in the region in general and Pakistan in particular.
Jamaat-i-Islami deputy chief Senator Prof Mohammad Ibrahim Khan said: “It was high time that the government and army take steps to revive country's prestige as a sovereign state.”
He said it was shameful that Americans entered Pakistani territory and carried out the operation without taking the authorities on board. President Obama, he said, clearly stated and Pakistan foreign office endorsed the step when it said “Americans had killed their enemy inside Pakistan soil”.
