Pakistan’s parliament condemns US raid to find and kill Osama bin Laden and calls for review of US ties
Pakistan's parliament condemned on Saturday the US raid to find and kill Osama bin Laden, calling for a review of US ties and warning that Pakistan could cut supply lines to American forces in Afghanistan if there were more such attacks.
"Parliament ... condemned the unilateral action in Abbottabad which constitutes a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty," it said in a resolution issued after security chiefs briefed legislators.
Pakistan has dismissed as absurd any suggestion that authorities knew bin Laden was holed up in a high-walled compound near the country's top military academy.
Members of the two houses of parliament said the government should review ties with the United States to safeguard Pakistan's national interests and they also called for an end to U.S. attacks on militants with its pilotless drone aircraft. They also called for an independent commission to investigate the case.
The legislators said US "unilateral actions" such as the Abbottabad raid and drone strikes were unacceptable, and the government should consider cutting vital US lines of supply for its forces in Afghanistan unless they stopped.
Meanwhile, Pakistani intelligence chief Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, head of the military's main Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, told parliament in a closed-door briefing he was "ready to resign" over the bin Laden affair, a legislator said.
Pasha, who was asked tough questions by some members of parliament, told the assembly he did not want to "hang around" if parliament deemed him responsible, legislator Riaz Fatyana told reporters. "I am ready to resign," Fatyana quoted the ISI chief as saying.
Opposition leader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif said civilian leaders, not the security agencies, should be deciding policy toward India, the United States and Afghanistan. "The elected government should formulate foreign policy. A parallel policy or parallel government should not be allowed to work," Sharif told a news conference.
