| GEO Pakistan | | Pakistan firing flares to warn NATO at border: Zardari | Updated at: 2141 PST, Thursday, September 25, 2008
NEW YORK: President Asif Ali Zardari said here Thursday that Pakistan's military is firing "flares" to warn NATO helicopters about the exact location of Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.
Zardari, who was beginning a meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, contradicted NATO accounts that its helicopters had come under "small arms fire" inside Afghan territory near the Pakistan border.
"You mean the flares," Zardari replied when asked about the NATO accounts, adding it's "to make sure they do not cross the border line.
"Sometimes the border is so mixed that they don't realize they have crossed the border," said Zardari, seated opposite Rice in a luxury hotel.
The Pakistani military said the troops had fired warning shots at two helicopters which were "well within Pakistani territory".
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) insisted however that the choppers had not entered Pakistani airspace.
As reporters filed out of the room, Rice told Zardari: "The border is very, very unclear, I know." |  |
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