ISLAMABAD, Jan 16: While the pre-dawn aerial attack in Bajaur Agency by US jets on Friday was shocking, equally astonishing was Pakistan’s reaction to the apparently unprovoked act that killed women and children.

The Foreign Office has lodged a protest with the US ambassador in Islamabad. Pakistan will also take up this matter in the next meeting of the Tripartite Commission, said a mild three-paragraph statement issued by the Foreign Office late on Saturday evening.

US Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker was summoned to the Foreign Office and formally handed over a protest by foreign secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan.

In the carefully worded statement, the Foreign Office did not censure the lethal aerial attack that claimed the lives of 18 civilians and instead merely declared: “Our Armed Forces have undertaken large-scale operation against foreign militants and it remains our responsibility to protect our people and territory from outside intrusion.”

Notably it was not the attack that was condemned but the loss of innocent civilian lives as a result of the attack. Also the protest lodged and condemnation was mild.

“As a result of this act there has been loss of innocent civilian lives which we condemn, ” is how the FO statement put it.

The official word was that the incident in Bajaur Agency was being thoroughly investigated and that according to preliminary investigations there was foreign presence in the area that in all probability was targeted from across the border in Afghanistan.

However, while the minister and other officials concerned have chosen to respond to the American attack in Pakistani territory by stating that the matter is being thoroughly investigated, they have shed no light on what elements of the attack require thorough investigations. There certainly appears to be no ambiguity on who launched the attack, and the Pakistan government appears to be fully aware of the number of casualties as well as the fact that more than half of those dead were members of the same family.

The formulation of the official reaction is being read as a smokescreen intended to cover up for an intelligence blunder and Pakistani state apparatus’ partial responsibility for that.

Incidentally, this is the second deadly attack on the Pakistan side of the border with Afghanistan this month.

Despite official claims that Pakistan had no prior intimation about these attacks in the tribal belt supposedly targeting suspected Al Qaeda hideouts, there are reports in the American media suggesting that Pakistan military may have been in the know of it.

The protest lodged by the Foreign office and Pakistan government’s announcement of its intent to thoroughly investigate the matter seem to lend credence to such reports. So do reports of the administration in Bajaur attempting to censor news coverage from the area .

The tone of the protest made to the US ambassador and the government’s inability to react to the attack as any sovereign government would to an attack by foreign force on its territory suggest that the protest is directed against flawed intelligence forming the basis of the attack rather than the attack itself.

The timing of the attack has also been somewhat intriguing. It was carried out less than a week before Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s first official visit to the United States where he will be meeting President Bush.

Interestingly, the US embassy cancelled at the last minute a roundtable meeting of the visiting former US presidential candidate of Democratic Party, Senator John Kerry, with a group of journalists at the American ambassador’s residence here on Sunday afternoon. Apparently the decision was taken to avoid putting the ambassador in a spot with awkward questions on the Bajaur incident. It was around midday that journalists were informed that it had been called off.