In These New Times

PressTV

26th January, 2009

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Cornered inAfghistan, the US organise a terrorist attack in Pakistan

The Jamaat-i-Islami party calls on Islamabad to close supply routes for NATO forces in Afghanistan, if US drones continue hitting Pakistan.

A top leader of the party, Senator Khurshid Ahmed, raised the issue in the upper house of parliament on Monday and said that the Pakistani government should tell the new US administration that if the US missile strikes were not stopped, then Pakistan would prevent supplies that pass through Pakistan to reach NATO and US-led forces in Afghanistan.

Federal Minister and leader of the House in Senate, Mian Raza Rabbani, said that US had carried out 32 drone attacks in Pakistan since last year and hoped that Barack Obama would not repeat the mistakes made by the former US president Gorge W. Bush.

“We are devising a policy with regard to drones’ strikes, however, we have to work under some limits,” he said.

‘The government has taken the issue seriously and has lodged strong protest that these attacks violate Pakistan’s territorial integrity,’ Rabbani said.

In a recent US drone attack, 21 people including three children were killed in North and South Waziristan agencies in the northwest tribal belt.

Earlier on Sunday, US commanders said that they had consulted President Barack Obama before launching recent drone attacks on Pakistan’s tribal belt near the Afghan border. Pakistan says the drone attacks undermine the country’s sovereignty and trigger public anger.

The US and its western allies have accused Pakistan of not doing enough to prevent attacks on supply routes as well as cross-border operations carried out by insurgents against foreign troops in Afghanistan.

Pentagon has used the allegation as a pretext to launch drone attacks on Pakistan’s tribal regions that has claimed 500 lives, mostly civilians.

RZS/MMA

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