4 Nov 2013

Pakistan Demands US Explanation Over Drone Strike Which Killed Taliban Leader

Mehsud
 Mehsud

A drone strike which killed Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud has been seen by many groups in Pakistan as US’s way of derailing planned peace talk with Tehreek-e-Taliban.
Following this development, the Pakistani government has summoned the US ambassador to protest the drone strike. The country’s Foreign Office said in a statement on Saturday that the strike was “counter-productive to Pakistan’s efforts to bring peace and stability to Pakistan and the region”.
The interior minister echoed that sentiment and said that the drone strike was a “murder of peace”.
“The government of Pakistan does not see this strike as a strike on an individual, but on the peace process,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar told Pakistan’s Express-Tribune newspaper.
Nisar accused the US of double-crossing Pakistan after the US ambassador to Islamabad assured him that the US would support a dialogue that Pakistan had initiated with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
The US ambassador had also assured Islamabad that there would be no attacks on Pakistani territory, before Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited Washington for talks last month, reports say.
Sharif had been expected to send a delegation to open contacts with the group, after winning backing for dialogue from political parties last month.

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