A deal between former Pakistani and United States presidents Pervez Musharraf and George W Bush allowed Americans to storm into the south Asian nation and kill al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, a report said.
Coming close on the heels of Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani taking potshots at the U.S for the unilateral operation that ?violated Pakistan?s sovereignty?, a report in the British daily The Guardian speaks of a deal struck between the two countries about ten years ago.
The deal supposedly discussed right after bin Laden escaped American forces in Tora Bora permitted an operation similar to the one carried out a week ago if the U.S. knew the location of the al Qaeda chief.
The deal also apparently included provisions of Pakistan raising an alarm and loud protests but eventually letting the issue cool down.
?There was an agreement between Bush and Musharraf that if we knew where Osama was, we were going to come and get him. The Pakistanis would put up a hue and cry, but they wouldn’t stop us,? a former senior U.S. official with knowledge of counterterrorism operations was quoted as saying.
The report also punches holes in Prime Minister Gillani?s claims in the Pakistani parliament on Monday where he slammed the U.S. operation, reminding of the origins of al Qaeda and playing the China card.
According to a secret U.S. diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks in August 2008, Gilani had reportedly told an American official that ?he doesn’t really care if the US carries out an operation in Pakistan. They will protest in Parliament and then ignore it?.
Meanwhile Pakistan is set to allow the United States to quiz the three detained widows of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden after Americans pressed for ?direct access?, media reports said.
An unnamed U.S. official was quoted as saying that Pakistan had agreed to granting access amid strained ties between the two nations. U.S. President Barack Obama on Sunday said there was a need to find out the type of support Osama bin Laden had in Pakistan.
In separate interviews, Obama and and his national security adviser Thomas E Donilon demanded the Pakistan grant access to all non-combatant personnel extracted from bin Laden?s compound in Abbottabad.
But even as both of them stepped carefully to not blame the top Pakistani leadership of aiding bin Laden, they said that there did seem to be a support system for its most wanted enemy at some level in the country where the al Qaeda chief was found 60km from its capital.
There must have been ?some sort of support network? for bin Laden inside Pakistan where was able to for years in a high security compound within the garrison town of Abbottabad, said President Obama, in an interview to CBS News.
?We don’t know who or what that support network was. We don’t know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government,? he said, speaking on the covert U.S. operation on May 2.
Meanwhile, President Obama called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday to to discuss the successful American action against Osama bin Laden among other matters, a statement from the White House said.
Obama also spoke to Singh to review the progress in implementing the initiatives launched during the his November 2010 visit to India and discussed defence, strategic and high-technology partnerships.