Pakistan Faces Embarrassing Questions Over Bin Laden

Pakistan has faced tough questions from the US on Monday about how Osama Bin Laden could hole himself up near the capital city of Islamabad, Reuters reports.
The questions came a day after the al-Qaeda leader was killed in a special operation of US forces in Abbottabad not so far from Islamabad.
The disclosure that the al-Qaeda leader was hiding in a compound in Abbottabad is believed to further strain relations between Pakistan and the United States.
Pakistan has always denied that terrorist sanctuaries exist on its soil.
Some of the Pakistani officials in the past had repeatedly commented that Bin Laden was hiding somewhere in the mountains on the Afghan side of the border.
In a White House report previously published, Pakistan was criticised for not being serious in the fight against terrorism.
Pakistani officials then dismissed the report and stressed that Pakistan was a key ally of the United States in the war on terror.
After the news about Osma Bin Laden's death emerged, the Afghan President Hamid Karzai appeared at a press conference describing the al-Qaeda leader as the murderer of Afghan people.
President Karzai said the revelation that Bin Laden was holed up in Pakistan proved that the Afghan people were right.
He said he had always emphasised that the war against terrorism should not be waged in the Afghan villages where there are no terrorists.
"We have always said that terrorists must be targeted in their sanctuaries and in the place where they are fueled, not in Afghan villages where there is no terrorism," Mr Karzai said at a press conference in Kabul yesterday.
Meanwhile,the former Chief of the Afghan National Directorate of Security, Amrullah Saleh, told TOLOnews on Monday that Pakistan is the commanding centre of the Taliban and insurgency in Afghanistan.
He said it was impossible for a nuclear armed country to be unaware of the whereabouts of al-Qaeda leader on its soil.
"Murder of Osmaba Bin Laden on Pakistani territory proved that the Afghans were right," Mr Saleh said.

Osama Bin Laden was killed in a compound in Abbottabad yesterday along with his son and two couriers whom the US intelligence had kept an eye on to track Bin Laden. A woman who was used as a shield was also reported killed and some other women were injured during the firefight in which Bin Laden himself had taken part.
Bin Laden's wife has not been killed in the operation, according to the White House.
Meanwhile, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has said Pakistani forces had not been involved in the US operation against Bin Laden.