Pakistan defends Bin Laden role

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari has denied that the killing of Osama Bin Laden in his country is a sign of its failure to tackle terrorism.

In an opinion piece in the Washington Post, Mr Zardari said his country was "perhaps the world's greatest victim of terrorism".
Bin Laden was shot dead by US forces in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad - Pakistan was not involved in the raid.
US officials said Bin Laden must have had a support system in Pakistan.
Bin Laden, 54, was the founder and leader of al-Qaeda. He is believed to have ordered the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, as well as a number of other deadly bombings.
He was America's most wanted man but had eluded them for more than a decade.
But US officials say they are "99.9%" sure that the man they shot and killed in a raid on a secure compound in Abbottabad and later buried at sea was Bin Laden.
They said a video had been made of Bin Laden's burial but have not said yet whether it, or any photographs of Bin Laden's body, will be released.
'Enormous price' The compound in Abbottabad is just a few hundred metres from the Pakistan Military Academy - the country's equivalent of West Point or Sandhurst
White House counter-terrorism chief John Brennan said it was "inconceivable that Bin Laden did not have a support system" in Pakistan.
But in his opinion piece, Mr Zardari said Pakistan had "never been and never will be the hotbed of fanaticism that is often described by the media".
"Such baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn't reflect fact," he said.

Analysis

Aleem Maqbool BBC News, Abbottabad

The early morning serenity makes it all more extraordinary that the world's most wanted man was hiding here and ultimately killed here. People are still stunned by the news he was living among them.
President Zardari has said he could not possibly have known he was there, but the Pakistanis are going to have a very tough time deflecting that criticism.
Mr Zardari - and other officials including the prime minister - have talked about security co-operation with the US over years, ultimately leading to this point. But they have had to concede that this was solely a US operation.
It is interesting they are stressing so much that the Pakistanis were not involved, because they are worried about a militant backlash.
There are thousands of Islamist militants still living in the tribal areas - for them Bin Laden was a hero. So it is not just the authorities but the public that is worried about the repercussions on the streets. It is civilians that have borne the brunt of the war on terror and they are really fearful that Osama Bin Laden's death is not going to bring an end to that at all.

"Pakistan had as much reason to despise al-Qaeda as any nation. The war on terrorism is as much Pakistan's war as it is America's."

He said Pakistan, which has suffered repeated terror attacks on its civilians and security services, had "paid an enormous price for its stand against terrorism".
"More of our soldiers have died than all of Nato's casualties combined. Two thousand police officers, as many as 30,000 innocent civilians and a generation of social progress for our people have been lost. "
Mr Zardari added that Pakistan would not be intimidated by threats from al-Qaeda.
US officials have said Pakistan was not involved in the operation to kill Bin Laden.
But Mr Zardari said that although the two countries had not worked together on the operation, "a decade of co-operation and partnership between the United States and Pakistan led up to the elimination of Osama Bin Laden as a continuing threat to the civilised world".
Mr Zardari gave no explanation as to how Bin Laden had been able to live in relative comfort in Pakistan, but simply said he "was not anywhere we had anticipated he would be".
The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad says the Pakistani government is in a very difficult position - domestically the public are angry, while the US now wants to know whether any other wanted figures have found sanctuary there.
The silence from Pakistan's security service is perhaps the most surprising aspect so far, says our correspondent.

Posted in: Current Affairs,Politics