AMERICA'S top military official says that while the US-Pakistan relationship is ''troubled'' it can be repaired, but Pakistan's Prime Minister has warned there will be no more ''business as usual'' between them following a NATO air strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
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The two countries - supposed allies in the war on terror but which often brawl over who is the enemy - have reached a new low in their relationship after a tortuous year, which began with an undercover CIA agent killing two men in a Lahore street and was most seriously punctured when US Navy SEALs launched a raid inside Pakistani territory to kill Osama bin Laden.
Pakistan's representative to the United Nations has written to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemning the strike as a breach of sovereignty and a violation of international law. ''The attack on Pakistan Army border posts is totally unacceptable and warrants an effective national response,'' the letter from Abdullah Hussain Haroon, seen by The Age, says.
And late yesterday, Pakistan decided to boycott next week's Bonn conference on the future of Afghanistan in protest against the air strikes.
''The cabinet has decided not to attend the Bonn meeting,'' a government official said.
Pakistani military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas alleged the attack was not a misdirected, quick strike, but a sustained attack that lasted almost two hours, and even after NATO was called to stop.
''The soldiers deployed on these posts immediately informed the senior officers, who took up the issue with regional headquarters at Peshawar and general headquarters in Rawalpindi,'' General Abbas said.
NATO was asked to cease fire, he said, ''but somehow it continued''. He rejected suggestions Pakistan troops fired first.
Speaking in London, the US's new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, conceded that Pakistani anger was justified, but stopped short of apologising for the strikes or explaining how they happened.
''They have reason to be furious that they have 24 soldiers that are dead, and that the ordnance that killed them was the ordnance of a partner. I would certainly like to enlist their patience in helping us figure out what happened,'' General Dempsey said.
He said he could not remember the US-Pakistan relationship being so bad.
Asked whether he believed the relationship was irreparable, he added: ''I'd like to believe that we could, over time, with Pakistan's approval, restore those lines of communication.''
His predecessor, Admiral Mike Mullen, accused Pakistan's government of supporting and sponsoring terror.
In September, Admiral Mullen described the Taliban-linked Haqqani terrorist network as ''a strategic arm'' of Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI.
General Dempsey was more circumspect: ''Whether they are acting at the behest or at the direction of the ISI, I'm not prepared to say that.''
Pakistan's Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, has said his country's relationship with the US and NATO would be reassessed.
''If I can't protect the sovereignty of my country, how [can we] say it is mutual respect and mutual interest,'' he said.
''Business as usual will not be there. We have to have something bigger that satisfies my nation and entire country.''
He said the support of the Pakistani people was crucial to the US winning its war in the region.
US Brigadier-General Stephen Clark, of Air Force Special Operations Command, will lead an investigation into the attacks.
With AFP
