ISLAMABAD — Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif summoned U.S. Embassy officials Saturday to formally protest continued drone strikes on Pakistani soil, just hours after a suspected missile attack killed seven people in a tribal area in the country’s northwest.
According to Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, the newly installed premier requested that the U.S. Embassy’s charge d’affaires, Richard E. Hoagland, meet with Pakistan’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Tariq Fatemi.
“It was conveyed to the U.S. that the government of Pakistan strongly condemns the drone strikes which are a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the ministry said in a statement. “The importance of bringing an immediate end to the drone strikes was emphasized.”
U.S. Embassy officials confirmed the meeting but otherwise declined to comment.
In its statement, the Foreign Ministry said Fatemi told Hoagland that continued U.S. strikes will “have a negative impact” on the two countries’ ability to resolve broader problems in the region, which include efforts to ensure stability when NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Pakistani security officials said two missiles from a suspected U.S. drone were fired shortly after sunset Friday on a compound near Shawal in North Waziristan, not far from the country’s border with Afghanistan.
On Saturday, it was still not clear who was targeted in the strike, although Taliban leaders and fighters from both Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as other militant groups, are believed to operate in that area.
“The area is remote and located very strategically. Shawal is at the Afghan border with thick forests,” said one tribal leader, who asked not to be identified so he could speak freely about the matter. “Militants are using this area for training and also transporting weapons to Afghanistan. They have training camps there.”
U.S. strikes on Pakistani soil have been on the decline, but President Barack Obama said last month that attacks would continue against targets that pose a “continuing, imminent threat” to the United States as long as there is “near-certainty” that civilian casualties could be avoided. Obama also indicated that different rules would continue to apply in the area that the United States considers the Afghanistan war theater, which includes Pakistan’s border region.
