Pakistan slams US drone-attack plans

Source: Morning Star

Pakistan slams US drone-attack plans

Friday 04 December 2009
by Tom Mellen

Islamabad slammed US plans to expand drone attacks into Baluchistan on Friday, warning that they would serve to further destabilise the country.

On Thursday, the New York Times reported that US President Barack Obama, a Nobel peace laureate, has authorised an expansion of remote-controlled air strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas.

And the paper cited unnamed officials as saying that US and Pakistani officials were currently discussing for the first time the possibility of CIA-operated drone strikes in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, a region outside the tribal areas that borders Afghanistan and Iran.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit responded to the reports on Friday by warning that the drone attacks were counterproductive because they served to boost "anti-US resentment."

Mr Basit declared that "there are limits to Pakistani co-operation," insisting that expanding US air strikes into Baluchistan "has never been part of our discussions. There are clear red lines as far as we're concerned."

As well as killing top militants, the remotely controlled "Hellfire" missile strikes are believed to have slain around a thousand civilians since former US president George W Bush authorised them in 2004.


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the Pakistani government is just saying the right things for certain segments of their society. In the mean time the attacks will continue.

http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/12/04/obama-green-lights-expansion-of-pakistan-drone-program/8734/

His position was that the use of drones relies very heavily on intelligence that the US does not have. The drones were successful at hitting "high value" targets which is proof, to him, that the Pakistani government and intelligence service are cooperating with the US by providing the on-the-ground intelligence that makes the drone use work. Kamal claims there is no way it could be so successful without official Pakistani cooperation.

The government and intelligence service know that the drone attacks are very unpopular with the Pakistani public, so they keep up the pretense of official protest against the attacks, while supporting it behind the scenes. He didn't address the issue to what happens long term to a Pakistani government when its public realizes its duplicity.