WASHINGTON: CIA Director Leon Panetta has told the US Congress that either Pakistan was an accomplice in Osama bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad or was incompetent.

In an in-camera testimony before a House panel, Mr Panetta said that he and other administration officials were trying to get to the bottom of the matter. “Either they were involved or incompetent. Neither place is a good place to be,” CNN quoted Mr Panetta as telling a member of Congress who asked the first question of the hour-long classified briefing.

In a separate interview to CBS, he acknowledged the CIA did not have any intelligence indicating “that Pakistan was aware that Bin Laden was there or that this compound was a place where he was hiding”.

But he noted that this was a location very close to a military academy and other sensitive military sites.

“It had been there since almost five years ago. It was very unusual as a compound. I just think they need to respond to the questions about why they did not know that that kind of compound existed,” Mr Panetta added.

“The common sense would dictate that they had to have some idea,” he was asked.

“Well those are, that’s why there are questions here that I think the best people to respond to those questions are going to be the Pakistanis,” Mr Panetta said.

Asked if the Pakistanis played any role in this operation, the CIA chief said: “This has been a long process, obviously, developing a lot of streams of intelligence. And some of those streams of intelligence were kind of in the normal process of working with the Pakistanis. But they were never aware of our focus on this compound or in Bin Laden.”

The US, he added, made the decision that it would not inform Pakistan and conduct this operation unilaterally.

Mr Panetta said that former president Bush and President Obama had both made very clear to the Pakistanis that “if we found a location where Osama bin Laden was located, we were going to go in and get him. And I think they understood that very clearly”.

The CIA director, however, disagreed with author Salman Rushdie that Pakistan should be declared a terrorist state.

“Obviously, it remains a very complicated and difficult relationship. But I don’t think we ought to break the relationship with the Pakistanis,” he said. “Look, we are virtually conducting a war in their country going after Al Qaeda. And at the same time, we’re trying to get their help in trying to be able to confront terrorism in that part of the world.”

Mr Panetta recalled that Pakistan had given the US “some help, and they have given us some cooperation.”