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| | GEO Pakistan | | US must halt drone strikes: PM | Updated at: 2101 PST, Wednesday, January 28, 2009
DAVOS: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has called on the United States to halt its drone attacks against al Qaeda and Taliban fighters on Pakistani soil and warned that the missile strikes were fuelling militarism in the country's troubled tribal border region.
"I want to put on record that we do not have any agreement between the government of the United States and the government of Pakistan," Gilani told an American TV channel in an interview at the World Economic Forum.
"If there are any drone attacks these would be counter-productive. Therefore we ask that if they have credible and actionable information, they share it with our intelligence agencies and we will take action ourselves."
Gilani said that ongoing army operations against the militants were backed by the region's local population, but warned that missile attacks jeopardized tribal support for the government and urged President Obama to "respect the sovereignty of Pakistan."
"We are successfully isolating the militants from the local tribes," said Gilani. "But when there is one drone attack then you get them united. There is a lot of anti-American sentiment growing in those areas."
Dismissing western skepticism of his government's commitment to fighting Islamic militancy on its soil, Gilani said the conflict was fueled by fighters from Chechnya, Uzbekistan and the Middle East spilling over the border from Afghanistan, rather than indigenous militancy.
He also said NATO's continuing struggle to establish law and order Afghanistan proved that neighboring regions that had been dragged into the conflict could not be pacified so easily, and rejected suggestions that U.S. military aid should be performance-related as "counter-productive."
"We have the ability and we have even the will but we don't have the capacity," he added.
"The world is focusing on Afghanistan; they have the most sophisticated weapons in the world and our poor people they are fighting without any arms or ammunition.
NATO is having a very, very tough time in Afghanistan. We are also fighting a very tough fight." |  |
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