US cuts troop numbers in Pakistan

Pakistan asks US to reduce military footprint in a sign of its annoyance over how raid that killed Bin Laden was carried out The US is reducing its military force in Pakistan at the request of Islamabad after US special forces killed Osama bin Laden , the Pentagon has said. More than 200 American troops are in the country helping to train the army in counter-insurgency, but there are also said to be intelligence and special forces there. No details have been given on the size of the reduction, the type of troops involved, nor whether Pakistan has set a new limit on US numbers. Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan said: “We were recently (within the past two weeks) notified in writing the government of Pakistan wished for the US to reduce its footprint in Pakistan. Accordingly we have begun those reductions.” The request will be taken as a sign of Islamabad’s annoyance that the raid on Bin Laden’s compound at Abbottabad was carried out without its knowledge. There have been suspicions in Washington that some in Pakistan knew the al-Qaida leader’s hideout. But Pervez Musharraf , the former president of Pakistan, denied that the country’s ISI intelligence service knew, at any level, of the presence of the world’s most wanted man in the garrison city. However, in an interview with BBC’s Newsnight on Wednesday , he admitted that it was “very difficult to prove non-complicity”. Musharraf said he had been surprised and shocked to discover where Bin Laden had been hiding. He added that neither he nor senior government officials had colluded in providing refuge for the fugitive while he was in power between 1999 and 2007. “I can’t imagine in my wildest dreams that the intelligence agency was doing something without telling me, so therefore there was no complicity at the strategic level.” However, the intelligence service had demonstrated “negligence, ineptitude and failure” in its failure to detect Bin Laden, he said. US military Pakistan United States Osama bin Laden Pervez Musharraf James Meikle guardian.co.uk

Posted by on May 26, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.