US President Barack Obama says in BBC interview ready to order similar mision to Bin Laden raid

US President Barack Obama said on Sunday he stands ready to order a similar mission to that which killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

During an interview with BBC, Obama stressed his job was to secure the United States, when asked whether he would do the same again if another high-value target was discovered in Pakistan, or any other sovereign territory. "We are very respectful of the sovereignty of Pakistan, but we cannot allow someone who is actively planning to kill our people or our allies' people, we can't allow those kinds of active plans to come to fruition without us taking some action," he added.

"Our hope is, and our expectation is, is that we can achieve that in a way that is fully respectful of Pakistan's sovereignty. But I had made no secret - I had said this when I was running for the presidency - that if I had a clear shot at bin Laden that we'd take it."

The interview was conducted last Thursday at the White House, ahead of Obama's European tour this week. He flies into Ireland on Monday and will also visit Britain, France and Poland.

Obama conceded that the raid was a calculated risk - and insisted he would seek closer cooperation with Islamabad, which was given no advance notice of the operation. "It could've gone worse," he told the BBC. "Part of the reason that I was able to take that calculated risk was an awareness of how well they prepared, how well we had staked out what the compound was like. It was set back from a large portion of the neighborhood there. We felt that we could get in and out relatively quickly."

Obama added that the killing of bin Laden was a "powerful" moment for the United States, ten years after the September 11, 2001, attacks that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people. "If you have met with families who lost loved ones on 9/11 - if you think about what an extraordinary trauma it was for the country as a whole, the sacrifices that had been made by troops - and you think that all traces back to this maniacal action by Al-Qaeda - for us, to be able to say unequivocally that the mastermind behind that event had been removed, was a powerful moment."