WASHINGTON: Pakistan's US envoy promised a “full inquiry” Monday into how Pakistani intelligence services failed to find Osama bin Laden in a fortified compound just a few hours drive from Islamabad.
“Obviously bin Laden did have a support system, the issue is that support system within the government and the state of Pakistan or within the society of Pakistan?” ambassador Husain Haqqani told CNN.
“We all know that there are people in Pakistan who share the same belief system and other extremists.... So that is a fact that there are people who probably protected him,” he said.
“We will do a full inquiry into finding out why our intelligence services were not able to track him earlier.”
“Any question about intelligence failures will definitely be addressed by us jointly,” Haqqani said.
“What I find incredulous is the notion that somehow, just because there is a private support network in Pakistan, the state, the government and the military of Pakistan shouldn't be believed.”
But the ambassador indicated there were some in Pakistan that still had to come to terms with working with the Americans.
“Look, we have to as a nation in Pakistan re-evaluate our view of this whole problem,” he said.
Some people after 9/11 “said we shouldn't side with the United States because the United States is about to crumble like the Soviet Union did and we should actually support the Taliban,” he said.
“You remember that, that changed. Pakistan has to come to terms with the fact and we will.”
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