Pakistani government seems to have two varieties, the extremists and moderates. Sounds familiar. Either that or Pakistan is extremely conflicted or it can't admit to its people it helped the U.S. or it's offended we didn't inform them. I don't pretend to know. But there are plenty of others who do!
Pakistan, reeling from domestic criticism over an American operation on its soil and international suspicion that it is harboring terrorists, expressed “deep concern” Tuesday over how the United States killed Osama bin Laden, but also took credit for helping to locate the terror mastermind.
In a sternly worded statement, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said its top spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, had kept the military garrison city where bin Laden was found “under sharp focus” since 2003.
....
Yet it also lodged what sounded like a warning to the United States, which Pakistan has long prohibited from carrying out ground operations on its soil.
“This event of unauthorized unilateral action cannot be taken as a rule,” the foreign ministry statement said. “Such an event shall not serve as a future precedent for any state, including the U.S. Such actions undermine cooperation and may also sometime constitute threat to international peace and security.” WaPo
John Kerry's take:
Kerry said he spoke to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last night, and they talked about trying to leverage this moment into hitting a "reset" button between the two countries.
"We have to be thoughtful about trying to make lemonade out of lemons," he said. He added, "If you want a radical Islamist government having possession of nuclear weapons and running Pakistan, then you can go off in a knee-jerk way that makes matters worse. I'm not making matters worse. And I think we have to be very thoughtful about this.”
Kerry said he was in no way defending the Pakistanis, but he said their cooperation was crucial in being able to track the couriers and survey the compound. msnbc
