25 Pak Soldiers killed by NATO shelling

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Re: 25 Pak Soldiers killed by NATO shelling

they dont even have the audacity to apologize ... ??? infact, they are blaming us that we fired first?
well played!!!

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Re: 25 Pak Soldiers killed by NATO shelling

Baigharat afghans and nato forces as always blaming pak forces for provoking first ..shram tum ko magar nahieen aitiee..why wud we start it first fully knowing that our posts had little ammunition with no air cover readily available?

Afghans Say Pakistan Fired First in NATO Attack

By DION NISSENBAUM in Kabul, TOM WRIGHT in New Delhi and OWAIS TOHID in KarachiAfghan and Western officials on Sunday said NATO and Afghan forces on a nighttime operation Saturday came under fire from across the Pakistan border before they called in a deadly airstrike on two Pakistani military posts, in an incident has left U.S.-Pakistan relations in tatters.

Pakstan’s military denied firing on NATO forces, calling the “unprovoked” raid on the border posts an “irresponsible act.” The army questioned why the coalition undertook a sustained two-hour attack on well-known border positions, involving helicopters and fighter jets, which left 25 soldiers dead and another 25 injured.
http://m.wsj.net/video/20111127/112711natofox/112711natofox_512x288.jpg
Tensions are high in Pakistan as a deadly air strike is blamed on NATO. The US is now being ordered to leave an airbase within 15 days. FOX News correspondent Molly Henneberg has the story. (Video Courtesy: Newscore)

“No first fire came from Pakistan troops,” said a senior Pakistani military official Sunday. “But they did respond in self-defense after NATO gunship helicopters and jet fighters carried out unprovoked firing.”
In retaliation, Pakistan indefinitely shut down North Atlantic Treaty Organization supply lines through Pakistan and said it was re-evaluating its military, intelligence and diplomatic links with the U.S. Authorities there gave the U.S. two weeks to pull out of a Pakistani air base that Washington has used in the past to launch drone strikes on Taliban militants, attacks that have become increasingly unpopular among Pakistani people.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, in a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday, communicated her “deep sense of rage” for the attack, which she said had set back efforts to improve relations, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said.
Enlarge Image

European Pressphoto Agency People burn NATO and U.S. flags as they shout slogans against the NATO airstrikes on Pakistani military checkposts in Mohmand tribal agency, during a protest in Multan, Pakistan, on Sunday.

             Pakistan Protests Raid                 [View Slideshow](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204630904577061270317324992.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories#)


                 [http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-QT185_1126pa_D_20111126090838.jpg](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204630904577061270317324992.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories#)
                  Reuters                     Activists protested in Lahore, Pakistan.

  •                      **                             [More photos and interactive graphics](http://online.wsj.com/public/page/0_0_WP_2003.html)                         **

On Sunday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen promised a full inquiry into the “tragic unintended incident.” He termed the deaths of Pakistani personnel “unacceptable and deplorable.”
Enlarge Image

Wali Khan Shinwari/European Pressphoto Agency NATO supply trucks sitting idle after Pakistani officials closed the border crossing into Afghanistan to protest the NATO attack.

The Obama administration pledged a full investigation into the attack. Mrs. Clinton, the U.S. government said on Saturday, committed to reviewing the “circumstances of the incident” and stressed “the importance of the U.S.-Pakistani partnership.”
The attack is a major setback for U.S. efforts to bring Pakistan onside as President Barack Obama’s administration works to find an exit strategy from the 10-year war in Afghanistan.
White House, State Department and Pentagon officials scrambled over the weekend to minimize the damage to relations, which were already tenuous, and assess the implications for both the immediate war effort in Afghanistan and broader cooperation sought by Washington to end the conflict.
The Pentagon can weather a limited disruption in the flow of military supplies into Afghanistan through Pakistan by routing more supplies through northern entry points. But a longer-term shutdown of traffic through Pakistan, or a decision by Pakistan to close a critical air-resupply corridor used by the military over southern Pakistan, could have more serious implications, defense officials said.
The State Department is assessing how the incident could affect efforts by Mrs. Clinton to secure Pakistan’s assistance in organizing peace talks with the Taliban to underpin the U.S. withdrawal.
“It’s as serious an incident as we’ve had. Whether it becomes a serious crisis remains to be seen,” a senior official said.
Mrs. Clinton, in an October visit to Islamabad, attempted to forge an agreement with Pakistan to squeeze militants operating in Pakistan’s border areas and to get the country’s help in bringing Taliban leaders to peace talks.
A Western official with knowledge of the discussions said both sides had begun to rebuild confidence ahead of a key international meeting in Bonn, Germany, next month to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.
The attack set the clock back on a relationship that had only just begun to recover from a number of incidents, including the secret U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil in May and the killing of two Pakistani men in Lahore by a Central Intelligence Agency contractor in January.
“It will be difficult to make much progress in the days to come,” the Western official said.
The incident took place hours after Gen. John R. Allen, the coalition commander in Afghanistan, met Friday with army officers in Pakistan to reduce rising tension on the poorly demarcated border. Gen. Allen said a one-star coalition general will lead an investigation into Saturday’s deaths.
Afghan and U.S. officials say their troops are increasingly facing fire from Pakistan’s side of the border. Pakistan is angry over the increased incidence of cross-border raids by Afghan and NATO forces.
As U.S. military, Pakistani forces and Afghan officials sought to piece together the incident, three Afghan officials and one Western official said the attack took place in response to fire from the remote Pakistani posts in the Mohmand tribal region, a lawless border area that abuts Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province.
Two Afghan officials working in the border area where the attack took place said Sunday that the joint force was targeting Taliban forces in the area when it received fire from a Pakistan military outpost. That prompted the coalition force to call for an air attack on the Pakistani posts, said an Afghan Border Police official in the area. Pakistani officials were informed of the operation before it took place, he said.
“There was firing coming from the position against Afghan army soldiers who requested support and this is what happened,” said a third Afghan official in Kabul, where Gen. Allen met with top government leaders for a special security meeting to discuss the incident. The Afghan official in Kabul said the government believes that the fire came from the Pakistan base—and not from insurgents operating nearby.
That view was bolstered by one Western official who discussed the attack with military officials in Kabul on Sunday.
“They were fired on from a Pakistani army base,” the Western official in Kabul said. “It was a defensive action.”
A U.S. official in Kabul said insurgents may have been firing into Afghanistan near the Pakistani border outpost Saturday morning, which prompted coalition forces to strike back. He pointed to an incident in September 2010, when a NATO helicopter fired on a Pakistan outpost, killing two soldiers.
“It was a situation where insurgent forces butted right up against a Pakistani border post and used that as a firing position. When we fired back, we hit Pakistani security forces. This is a possibility we’re circulating here for Saturday’s incident,” the official said.
Military officials in Kabul said insurgents in Pakistan have also used empty Pakistan border bases to stage attacks, which may have been the working assumption of the coalition forces who called in the airstrike.
U.S. officials said the units believed they were responding to incoming fire from the Pakistan side of the border.
“They believed they were coming under attack from that side of the border,” a senior U.S. official said, although investigators have yet to pinpoint the precise source of fire.
The official said “all the leaders on the U.S. side are taking this very seriously,” given damage to relations with Pakistan and the potential impact of a lengthy disruption in the flow of NATO supplies.
“We always have alternatives in the terms of logistics. It depends on how long it lasts as to whether or not there will be a longer-term impact,” the senior U.S. official said of flow of supplies through Pakistan.
Pakistan’s military disputes this version of events. Military officials say the posts were attacked without warning at 2 a.m, while most of the around 50 soldiers were sleeping, and that NATO helicopters and jets even attacked Pakistani military forces sent in as back-up during the two-hour assault. Pakistan says it has increased the number of soldiers at border posts like these as part of a campaign in Mohmand this year to wipe out the Taliban in the area.
The campaign, involving 3,000 Pakistani soldiers, took back much of Mohmand from the Taliban. But Pakistan’s army says Taliban militants continue to mount attacks on its forces in Mohmand from across the border in Afghanistan.
The posts hit by NATO on Saturday are built on the Salala mountain, part of a chain of low-lying rugged mountains that divide Pakistan from Afghanistan. Many of the tribal people that live in the area, and have set up lashkars, or local armies, to aid the military to attack the Taliban were angered over the NATO attack. “We have sacrificed our lives in the fight against Taliban who killed hundreds of our tribesmen,” said Malik Mohammad Ali, a tribal elder from Mohmand.
The incident comes as the U.S. has begun to more publicly voice concerns that Pakistan’s military, despite fighting militants in places like Mohmand, is harboring some factions of the Taliban as a way of influencing events in Afghanistan after most international troops pull out in 2014. At the least, U.S. officials said, Pakistan is failing to stop some militants firing on U.S. troops from close to Pakistani military posts.
But the U.S. also has attempted to get Pakistan army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to play a larger role in bringing the Taliban into nascent peace talks that have so far failed to bear fruit.
Gen. Kayani’s ability to accede to U.S. demands is greatly limited by events like the one Saturday, which stoke anti-U.S. fervor in Pakistan, said Talat Masood, a retired general and defense analyst.
“Those who have been more moderate, even those people are asking is it worth having a relationship with the U.S.?” Mr. Masood said. “It will be very difficult for Gen. Kayani to defend the alliance.”
Mr. Masood said he had taped a television chat show Saturday after the attack on the border posts during which he was the only participant arguing that the U.S. wouldn’t have targeted Pakistani soldiers in Mohmand as a deliberate act of aggression.
Few observers, though, expect a complete breakdown in relations.
Pakistan has shut its border, which will temporarily hurt NATO’s supply chain to Afghanistan, but the country continues to rely on billions of dollars in military and civilian aid from the U.S. Washington, likewise, needs Pakistan to keep up pressure on Taliban militants in the tribal region, and as a supply route.
“This is a need-based relationship. It will have its temporary hiccup, probably in the form of the suspension of NATO cargo,” said Imtiaz Gul, director of the Center for Research and Security Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank.
During the national security meeting Sunday, Afghan leaders also solidified plans to carry out the second phase of plans for coalition forces to cede security control to Afghan forces across the country.
The new plan includes six of the country’s 34 provinces, including Kabul, seven major cities, including Jalalabad, and dozens of districts, including Helmand province’s Marjah, which was the first target last year of U.S. Marines at the forefront of the American military surge meant to cripple the Taliban-led insurgency.
If the transition is a success, it will put Afghan forces in the lead in protecting more than half of the country’s population, officials said.
During the first phase of the transition process carried out earlier this year, Afghan forces assumed control of seven cities and provinces.
—Maria Abi-Habib
and Habib Khan Totakhil in Kabul,
and Adam Entous in Washington
contributed to this article.

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Re: 25 Pak Soldiers killed by NATO shelling

Since the afghans are claiming that they were conducting some operation against the militants when they came under fire from the Pakistani posts? Would they care to explain as to how many taleban were killed in that operation? Why suddenly they have remembered to carry out operations against taleban in eastern Afghanistan, Pakistan has been asking them
For the past six Months and they have been resisting.

I was thinking since the day of the incident that this would be the drop scene, NATOs investigation will find out that Pakistan fired first and then when NATO retaliated the casualties occurred, an apology, and then the situation will become normal for the next few months.

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Re: 25 Pak Soldiers killed by NATO shelling

This!

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Re: 25 Pak Soldiers killed by NATO shelling

This is called “Chori aur seena zori”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/11/27/us-makes-nice-with-pakistan-after-friendly-fire-incident/

U.S. Makes Nice With Pakistan After Border Bombing Incident, But Some in U.S. Push Hardball ApproachPublished November 27, 2011| FoxNews.com
**The U.S. has made several overtures in response to the death of 24 Pakistani soldiers possibly from a NATO drone, but while Pakistani officials scold the U.S. for the alleged friendly fire incident, some observers suggest the U.S. respond with a tougher approach.

**“We have had soft diplomacy with them for along time, giving them aid with no conditions whatsoever. We’ve got to stop that,” said retired Gen. Jack Keane. “And that’s the reality of that – maintain the relationship and change the conditions of that relationship so that when we provide them support there’s conditions that go along with that, and we want certain things back for that.”
**“I would tie whatever aid money we are giving to Pakistan, if they deserve any at all – to access (the) drone base, keeping the supply lines open, working rigorously with us on counter terrorism,” said Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman. **

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have offered their condolences over the deaths, which Afghan officials say was the result of a request for NATO backup following an attack on Afghan troops from the Pakistan border region.

Other senior officials have also been in contact with Pakistani officials, said National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor.

“Senior U.S. civilian and military officials have been in touch with their Pakistani counterparts from Islamabad, Kabul and Washington to express our condolences, our desire to work together to determine what took place, and our commitment to the U.S.-Pakistan partnership which advances our shared interests, including fighting terrorism in the region,” Vietor said. NATO and U.S. forces are now investigating the incident, which led to Pakistan ordering the allies to vacate an air base that has been used as a backup installation when nasty weather prevents the drones from returning to bases in Afghanistan.

Nonetheless, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar told Clinton on Sunday that the alleged NATO attack negated all progress in improving the damaged alliance between the two countries. The Pakistani foreign minister’s office said Khar told Clinton in a phone call that the alleged NATO attack was unacceptable, showed complete disregard for human life and sparked rage within Pakistan.

But the new trough – following Pakistan’s anger at U.S. silence before its raid on the compound where Usama bin Laden was found – may not be lasting.

Aside from the fact the allies are less reliant on Pakistan because they have reduced shipments of non-lethal supplies from there into Afghanistan, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said the Pakistanis are dependent on billions in U.S. aid dollars.

“There’s a lot of diplomacy that has to occur and it has to be tough diplomacy in the sense that they need to understand that our support for them financially is dependent on their cooperation with us. But it’s not the kind of situation where you just cut off all assistance because we do need their (location) in the region,” Kyl said.

Charles “Cully” Stimson, a former assistant defense secretary for detainees, said military-to-military relations remain “quite good” but an appeasement between the two nations will require presidential leadership. President Obama needs to “personally appeal” to Pakistan’s leaders, he said, to help “cool things down.”

Stimson added that a bigger concern for the U.S. is making sure relations don’t tip off the deep end.

“There are nukes in Pakistan,” he said. “They move them in unconventional ways, from one place to the next. And if those nukes got in the hands of the Haqqani Network or the Taliban or al Qaeda, that would be a disaster so we can’t let that happen.”

Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton agreed that relations must be kept positive.

“It’s tempting for people to say we ought to just throw the Pakistanis over the side and stop giving them the aid and all the rest of it,” he said. “As long as that country has nuclear weapons that could fall into the hands of radicals and be a threat worldwide, they’ve got incredible leverage.”

With anger simmering – thousands protested Sunday outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi – the Pakistanis have closed two border crossing points between Afghanistan and Pakistan – Torkham in the northwest Khyber tribal area and Chaman in southwestern Baluchistan province.

That means ground lines with Pakistan are closed and remaining supply routes are blocked.

Brigadier Gen. Carsten Jacobsen, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, told Fox News the cross-border area was dangerous to begin with, but now an inability to communicate “only serves one side and that is the insurgency.”

“This is exactly the area where … terrorists are operating on either side of the border, they use it for safe haven, use it for migrating across the border, use it for firing at us as well at the Pakistani forces. So it’s a very vile area, very dangerous,” he said.

Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said that while he is saddened by the deaths, the latest incident demonstrates another example of why the U.S. should abandon the region.

“As difficult as it is to find our way through this diplomatic morass between the incompetence and maybe corruption in Afghanistan and the complicity in parts of Pakistan, our soldiers are caught right in the middle of this,” he said. “At a time when they’re trying to bring peace to this region, I think it’s an argument, from my point of view, of moving us toward the day when our American soldiers come home.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.[FONT=arial, sans-serif]

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/world/asia/afghanistan-worries-after-attacks-in-pakistan.html?_r=1&hp

NATO Strikes’ Aftermath Leaves Afghanistan Uneasy

By ALISSA J. RUBIN and SALMAN MASOOD

**Published: November 27, 2011

**KABUL, Afghanistan — **As investigations began on Sunday into the NATO attacks on two military outposts that killed at least 25 Pakistani soldiers, Afghan officials expressed concern about the possible long-term damage to regional security.

Afghan Foreign Ministry officials on Sunday urged Pakistan to not follow through on threats to boycott a conference on Afghanistan’s future that is scheduled for Dec. 5 in Bonn, Germany. “We hope that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan will participate in the Bonn conference because the conference for us is the most important political event of the year,” a ministry spokesman, Janan Mosawi, said.

Pakistan’s participation is considered vital, officials said, given the leverage that it maintains over some of theTaliban factions fighting inside Afghanistan. **A spokeswoman of the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs said no decision had been made about attending the conference. “The matter is being examined,” the spokeswoman said.

In Washington, American officials were trying to assess how the attacks had happened. According to preliminary reports, allied forces in Afghanistan engaged in a firefight along the border and called in airstrikes. Senior Obama administration officials were also weighing the implications on a relationship that took a sharp turn for the worse after a Navy Seal commando raid killed Osama bin Laden near Islamabad in May and that has deteriorated since then.

NATO was also investigating after saying on Saturday it was likely that NATO-led airstrikes had led to the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers. “This was a tragic unintended incident,” the group’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said in a statement. “We will determine what happened and draw the right lessons.”

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, called Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday to convey the “deep sense of rage felt across Pakistan,” according to a government statement. The border attacks negate “the progress made by the two countries on improving relations and forces Pakistan to revisit the terms of engagement,” Ms. Khar was quoted as saying. Earlier, Pakistani military officials had called the attacks unprovoked acts of aggression by the United States.

Pakistan buried the dead soldiers on Sunday as thousands of protesters gathered outside the American Consulate in Karachi. A Reuters reporter said the angry crowd shouted “Down with America,” and one man climbed on the wall surrounding the heavily fortified compound and attached a Pakistani flag to the barbed wire.

One funeral, led by the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, was held at the Corps Headquarters in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa Province in northwest Pakistan near the site of the attacks. General Kayani also visited soldiers who were injured in the attacks.

On Saturday, the Pakistani government ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to vacate the drone operations it runs from Shamsi Air Base in western Pakistan within 15 days. It also closed the two main NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, including the one at Torkham. NATO forces receive roughly 40 percent of their supplies through that crossing, which runs through the Khyber Pass, and Pakistan gave no estimate for how long the routes might be shut down.

On Sunday, the state-run news media quoted Rehman Malik, the Pakistani interior minister, as saying that the NATO supply lines had “been stopped permanently.” Mr. Malik said NATO containers would not be allowed to cross the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Hundreds of trucks remained stalled at border crossings, The Associated Press reported, leaving them vulnerable to militant attacks. About 150 trucks were destroyed during attacks about a year ago after Pakistan closed one Afghan border crossings for about 10 days in retaliation for a helicopter strike that killed two Pakistani soldiers.

This time, The A.P. said, Pakistan has closed both its crossings, and nearly 300 trucks carrying coalition supplies were backed up at Torkham and at Chaman in Baluchistan Province in the southwest.

The Pakistani government also lodged a protest with Afghanistan on Sunday about the “use of Afghan territory against Pakistan,” according to government officials. The Afghan government was urged to take steps to ensure such attacks would not be repeated.

The Bonn conference, to which more than 50 countries are sending representatives, had been intended to showcase the international commitment to Afghanistan’s security as well as its sovereignty.** If Pakistan, which is widely seen as a seedbed for many Afghan insurgents, refuses to participate, Western diplomats and military officials said, there would be little doubt that the insurgency would continue.

Mr. Mosawi described the conference as important “in terms of the vision the Afghan government will be sharing with the international community, with the region in the 10 years after transition.”

**“Pakistan’s participation for us is extremely important. and we hope that they will continue as they have agreed to at the Foreign Ministry level in Bonn,” he said.

Mr. Mosawi said that the Afghan government had been contacted by the Pakistani ambassador in Kabul, Afghanistan, but would not elaborate and did not respond to questions asking whether the Afghan government had been asked to take steps to limit NATO military activity on the Pakistani border.

Alissa J. Rubin reported from Kabul, and Salman Masood from Islamabad.

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Afghani jesi chawal kism ki nation is dunya mein koi aur nahi. when the time comes they will not hesitate to kill their own father.

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not for free....for the right price!

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hes right! the response was not enough!

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video after the attack on soldiers!

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^ rangloi this is not real video.

The video is posted on Nov 10 by The Express Tribune, check the date on yt

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really? it was posted on the fb page! i thought it was after the nato attack! ;(

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The mischief seems to be due to afghan soldiers, according to dawn the afghans claim that thy came into fire from the Pakistani side and then they called air cover. Another thing mentioned in that article is that Pakistani army was informed ahead of time about the operation there.

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agreed to everything you said, except that it did not start from raymond davis... although we have been acting like a slave of west since long, but this humiliating situation started (in near past) with the first drone strike, when our fellow country men, innocent children and women were dying with the missiles hitting their homes, village gatherings, markets and even funerals, they were crying helplessly and looking at us to side with them and console them, but we chose to call them islamists and terrorists and mullas and what not, it picked up pace when US attacked children madarsa in damadola at night, which killed 80+ people in one attack most of whom were young boys sleeping in the hostel of madarsa, and the great mush simply claimed it was Pakistani forces who did this action just to save his master from the wrath, and made Pakistan army bear the burn... a large number of us still continue to justify this cold blooded killing, most of them who have never even been to those areas and know nothing about how life goes on there. We will only realize this when a missile will hit close to our home, God forbid, taking lives of our near and dear ones.

a large number of people being killed in Karachi is no different in its psych, the only difference is the killing machine, people slowly got used to it, and now falling 6-7 bodies a day has become norm, one part of the city burns and people die, while in other parts life goes on like nothing happened, people even stopped watching news, and they say if you watch news the whole city is burning and everyone is dying, if you don't watch it, just go about your usual business and all is well.

but our so called liberal secular corrupt elite continues to tell us to be calm, don't respond we are in grave financial situation think about the repercussions of questioning the dimy god america, and fake religious-political parties continue to give them a help hand

kartay hain ghulamoon ko ghulaami pay razaamand
taaweel-e-masaael ko banaatay hain bahaana

and to be honest, imran has a lot to prove with his actions, he needs to stop the blame game and act differently instead of following the footsteps of the same corrupt people we hate today, as much as i want to vote for this man and support him, he continues to degrade himself with idiotic comments and succumbing to the enemies in all sorts of disguise from journalists to ambassadors to "former-corrupts"

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not afghans only, al jazeera, the news even bbc claimed it was ISAF ground forces accompanied by afghan forces...

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Who are they trying to fool now? A couple of days down the lane and all of them will be working for the Americans at the same wage!

NATO raid upshot: Angry Pakistan threatens to derail Afghan endgameBy Kamran Yousaf
Published: November 28, 2011

**ISLAMABAD: ****As Pakistan buried its dead from Saturday’s attack on a border check post by Nato troops, the government looked for more ways to express its anger against Nato and the United States for the incident. On Sunday, it threatened to review its role in facilitating talks with insurgents and re-think its participation in next month’s Bonn conference.

**

Revisit engagement
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told Express News that Pakistan “will revisit its engagement with the US, Nato and the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf)” while an unnamed Pakistani official said that the country’s security establishment has already halted “all efforts to persuade the Afghan Taliban to come to the negotiating table.”

On Saturday, Pakistan decided to shut down key Nato supply routes, ask the US to vacate a remote airbase in Balochistan and review ties with Washington. Pakistan has also protested to Afghanistan over the attacks. It said that the use of Afghan territory against Pakistan was a violation of Isaf’s mandate for operations in Afghanistan.

For its part, the US Central Command said that it will conduct its own investigation into Nato’s involvement. General James Mattis, who heads the command, is expected to appoint an investigating officer by Monday. Nato officials privately insist that their troops were attacked first, a charge that the Pakistan military strongly denies.

A Pentagon spokesman said that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defence Secretary Leon Panetta were closely monitoring reports of the incident. Spokesman John Kirby added: “Both offer their deepest condolences for the loss of life.”

Clinton, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Marine Corps Gen. John R. Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force and of US Forces in Afghanistan, each called their Pakistani counterparts, the Pentagon spokesman said. Cameron P. Munter, US ambassador to Pakistan, also met with Pakistani officials in Islamabad.

Clinton and Panetta both stressed “the importance of the US-Pakistani partnership.”** Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasumussen, however, fell short of a formal apology, and instead tweeted that the airstrike was a “tragic unintended incident,” adding “the death of Pakistani personnel are as unacceptable and deplorable as the deaths of Afghan and international personnel.”**

Pakistani stance
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said that decisions of the defence cabinet committee (DCC) on the Nato forces’ attack would be implemented. Talking to the media in Islamabad, he said Nato supplies (through Pakistan) “had been stopped permanently.”

Pakistani officials also warned that the attack will have “huge implications” for the Afghan endgame.

Process halted
**When Secretary Clinton led a delegation last month to Islamabad, authorities in Pakistan had agreed with the US to convince certain insurgent groups, including the Haqqani network, to enter the meaningful talks for seeking a peaceful end in Afghanistan. “That process has now come to a halt,” said the official.
**

Republican Senator Jon Kyl called for “tough diplomacy” with Pakistan and urged Islamabad to cooperate to maintain its financial aid. “We do need their support in the region,” he acknowledged.

So furious are the authorities that the government has put on hold its decision on attending a key international conference on Afghanistan slated for December 5 in Bonn. Foreign ministry spokesperson Tehmina Janjua said the decision to attend the Bonn conference “was being examined.”

It is believed that Islamabad will now set certain pre-conditions before resumption of cooperation with stakeholders. Demands include a formal public apology, a thorough investigation, action against those responsible, compensation for the families of victims and firm guarantees that such incursions are not repeated.

FM Khar called her counterparts from key Nato countries on Sunday. Khar spoke to Clinton on the decisions taken by the DCC after the Nato attack. Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu assured that as a member of Nato, Turkey would ask for an impartial inquiry.

with Additional input from agencies
Published in The Express Tribune, November 28[SUP]th[/SUP], 2011.
%between%

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/world/asia/pakistan-and-united-states-bitter-allies-in-fog-of-war.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

In Fog of War, Rift Widens Between U.S. and Pakistan

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

Published: November 27, 2011

WASHINGTON — The NATO air attack that killed at least two dozen Pakistani soldiers over the weekend reflected a fundamental truth about American-Pakistani relations when it comes to securing the unruly border with Afghanistan: the tactics of war can easily undercut the broader strategy that leaders of both countries say they share.

**The murky details complicated matters even more, with Pakistani officials saying the attack on two Pakistani border posts was unprovoked and Afghan officials asserting that Afghan and American commandos called in airstrikes after coming under fire from Pakistani territory. NATO has promised an investigation.
**
The reaction inside Pakistan nonetheless followed a now-familiar pattern of anger and tit-for-tat retaliation. So did the American response of regret laced with frustration and suspicion. Each side’s actions reflected a deepening distrust that gets harder to repair with each clash.

**The question now, as one senior American official put it on Sunday, is “what kind of resilience is left” in a relationship that has sunk to new lows time after time this year — with the arrest in January of a C.I.A. officer, Raymond Davis, the killing of Osama bin Laden in May and the deaths of so many Pakistani soldiers.
**
**In each of those cases, Pakistan had reason to feel that the United States had violated its sovereignty. Even if circumstances on the ground justified the American actions, they have nonetheless made it difficult to sustain political support inside Pakistan for the strategic cooperation that both countries acknowledge is vital to winning the war in Afghanistan. “Imagine how we would feel if it had been 24 American soldiers killed by Pakistani forces at this moment,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat from Illinois, said **on “Fox News Sunday.” The rift is one result of the United States’ two-pronged strategy in Afghanistan, which relies on both negotiating and fighting to end the war.

The latest breach in relations came only five weeks after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton led a senior American delegation to Pakistan to deliver a blunt warning to the country’s leaders to intensify pressure on extremists carrying out attacks into Afghanistan, while at the same time urging them to help bring more moderate members of the Taliban to the negotiating table.

Mrs. Clinton called the administration’s approach “fight, talk, build,” meaning the United States and its allies would continue to attack militants in Afghanistan and beyond, seek peace talks with those willing to join a political process and build closer economic ties across the region. All are essential to any hope of peace and stability in Afghanistan, and all rely on Pakistan. That has forced the two countries into a strategic alliance whose tactics seem to strain it over and over again.

Mrs. Clinton’s diplomacy — bolstered by Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and David H. Petraeus, the director of the C.I.A. — appeared to smooth out the roughest edges in relations, according to officials from both countries.

Recognizing that heightened military activity along the mountainous border with Afghanistan increases the risks of deadly mistakes, American and Pakistani forces have in recent weeks tried to improve their coordination. That cooperation had been largely suspended after the killing of Bin Laden, which President Obama ordered without informing the Pakistani authorities.

Just last Friday, Pakistan’s military commander, Army Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, met Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, in Rawalpindi to discuss “measures concerning coordination, communication and procedures” between the Pakistan Army, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan Army, “aimed at enhancing border control on both sides,” according to a statement by the Pakistani military.
“Then you have an incident that takes us back to where we were before her visit,” said Vali Nasr, a former deputy to the administration’s regional envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, and now a professor at Tufts University.

The problem, Mr. Nasr said, is that the United States effectively has not one but two strategies for winning the war in Afghanistan.

While the State Department and the White House believe that only a negotiated political solution will end the war, American military and intelligence commanders believe that they must maximize pressure on the Taliban before the American military withdrawal begins in earnest before 2014. The military strategy has led to the intensified fighting in eastern Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan, increasing tensions. A major offensive last month involving 11,000 NATO troops and 25,000 Afghan fighters in seven provinces of eastern Afghanistan killed or captured hundreds of extremists, many of them using Pakistan as a base.

In recent months American forces have complained that they have taken mortar and rocket fire from positions in Pakistani territory, as officials said they did early Saturday in the Mohmand region, just north of the Khyber Pass, prompting American troops to call in airstrikes. “It’s a case of the tail wagging the dog,” Mr. Nasr said. When they respond forcefully along the border, “U.S. commanders on the ground are deciding U.S.-Pakistan policy.”

As the Pakistani public and press seethed over the latest attack, the country’s leaders closed supply routes to Afghanistan that NATO relies on, as they have at least twice before, and ordered the C.I.A. to vacate a base it has used to launch drone strikes.

It is unclear how long the Pakistanis will keep the supply routes closed, and whether the promised investigation might help assuage the anger over the deaths of Pakistani soldiers.

On one level, it does not matter whether the strikes are justified as self-defense or acknowledged as a catastrophic error, though if an investigation shows that the Pakistani soldiers were complicit in attacking the NATO-Afghanistan forces across the border, the tensions could worsen further.

**The damage to the American strategy has been done, and the question is how long it will take for officials from both countries to resume cooperation where it is in their interest to do so.
**
Asked on “Fox News Sunday” how he would respond in such a situation, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., President Obama’s former ambassador to China who is now seeking the Republican presidential nomination, said, “I would recognize exactly what the U.S.-Pakistani relationship has become, which is merely a transactional relationship.” He said that American aid to Pakistan should be contingent on keeping the supply lines to Afghanistan open and continuing counterterrorism cooperation.

“And I think our expectations have to be very, very low in terms of what we can get out of the relationship,” he said.

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Re: 25 Pak Soldiers killed by NATO shelling

Pakistan is refuting the claims of Afghans that they were under attack, before launching attacks on the check posts:

http://www.dawn.com/2011/11/28/pakistan-denies-nato-was-under-fire-before-attack.html
Pakistan denies Nato was under fire before attack

Reuters

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s military on Monday denied reports that Nato forces in Afghanistan came under fire before launching a cross-border attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers over the weekend.
**“This is not true. They are making up excuses. What are their losses, casualties?” said army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas in a text message.
**
A report, citing Afghan and Western officials, had said that fire from a Pakistani military outpost into Afghanistan prompted the air strikes.

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Re: 25 Pak Soldiers killed by NATO shelling

We do not accept Nato apology: Pak Army

160

Re: 25 Pak Soldiers killed by NATO shelling

^ true, we do not accept apology, we only accept dollars