Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n
Pakistan on Tuesday acknowledged „tactical advantages” to U.S. drone strikes on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, but appeared to shrug off the unexpected confirmation by Washington of attacks on its soil.<\/p>\n
The remarks from Pakistan’s foreign ministry came as President Barack Obama confirmed for the first time that drone aircraft had targeted Islamist militants in Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal areas on the Afghan border.<\/p>\n
„Notwithstanding tactical advantages of drone strikes, we are of the firm view that these are unlawful, counterproductive and hence unacceptable,” ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told AFP in a text message.<\/p>\n
„Our view has always been very clear and position principled,” he added.<\/p>\n
U.S. diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks in late 2010 showed that Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders privately supported U.S. drone attacks, despite public condemnation in a country where the U.S. alliance is hugely unpopular.<\/p>\n
When asked about drones in a chat with web users on Google+ and YouTube, Obama said „a lot of these strikes have been in the FATA” – Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.<\/p>\n
Relations between the United States and Pakistan deteriorated sharply in 2011, over the covert American raid that killed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in May and U.S. air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.<\/p>\n
Islamabad is now reviewing its entire alliance with the United States and has kept its Afghan border closed to NATO supply convoys since November 26.<\/p>\n
It ordered U.S. personnel to leave Shamsi air base in western Pakistan, widely believed to have been a hub for the CIA drone program, and is thought likely to only reopen the Afghan border by exacting taxes on convoys.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Agence France-Presse Pakistan on Tuesday acknowledged „tactical advantages” to U.S. drone strikes on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, but appeared to shrug off the unexpected confirmation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[210,208,66,135],"class_list":["post-776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-armata","tag-afganistan","tag-drone","tag-granite","tag-pakistan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.noi3.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.noi3.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.noi3.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.noi3.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.noi3.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/site.noi3.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.noi3.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.noi3.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.noi3.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}