ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s military chief on Wednesday lashed out at the United States over cross-border raids by American troops from Afghanistan and said his country’s sovereignty will be defended “at all cost.”
In an unusually strong public statement, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said a raid last week into Pakistan’s South Waziristan region killed innocent civilians and could backfire on the anti-terror allies.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would not comment directly on Kayani’s remarks. But he said the U.S. military is working closely with the Pakistanis in regard to the border region.
But Kayani said such operations were covered by no agreement between Pakistan and U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan and risked stoking militancy in a region Washington regards as an intolerably safe harbor for al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
“Falling for short-term gains while ignoring our long-term interest is not the right way forward,” Kayani said in a statement. “To succeed, the coalition would be required to display strategic patience and help the other side the way they want it, rather than adopting a unilateral approach.”
The Pakistan government already hauled in the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad to lodge a strong protest over a highly unusual raid by helicopter-borne ground troops into South Waziristan last week that residents said killed about 15 people. Officials have said they included civilians, though they acknowledged they had no firsthand information.
U.S. officials have confirmed that American troops carried out the operation but provided no details. The objective and results of the mission remain unclear.
Together with a barrage of suspected U.S. missile strikes into Pakistan’s border zone, the raid indicates that Washington is getting more aggressive against militant targets beyond Afghanistan’s frontier.
A U.S. missile strike Monday in the North Waziristan tribal region destroyed a seminary and houses associated with a veteran Taliban commander and killed 20 people, including some women and children as well as four foreign militants, officials said.
The tribal belt is considered a possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.
