Obama presses Pak to investigate on bin Laden's support system

Lalit K Jha
Washington, May 9 (PTI) US President Barack Obama has
pressed the Pakistan government to investigate on what kind of
support infrastructure al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden had at
his Abbottabad compound near Islamabad.
"We think that there had to be some sort of support
network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan. But we don't know
who or what that support network was," Obama told the '60
Minutes' show on the CBS News in his first exclusive interview
after bin Laden's death.
Obama stopped short of saying the Pakistani government
was involved, but said: "We don't know whether there might
have been some people inside of government, people outside of
government, and that's something that we have to investigate
and more importantly, the Pakistani government has to
investigate."
His comments came as his top security advisor said
there was no evidence so far that the Pakistan Government knew
about the al-Qaeda chief's presence in the country.
"We have already communicated to them, and they have
indicated they have a profound interest in finding out what
kinds of support networks bin Laden might have had. But these
are questions that we're not gonna be able to answer three or
four days after the event. It's gonna take some time for us to
be able to exploit the intelligence that we were able to
gather on site," Obama said.
Refraining from making any adverse comment on Pakistan
given that stakes are high right now, Obama said he has to be
careful about sources and methods and how America operates and
how it pieced together this intelligence, because they are
still be going after terrorists in the future.
"What I can say is that Pakistan, since 9/11, has been
a strong counterterrorism partner with us. There have been
times where we've had disagreements. There have been times
where we wanted to push harder, and for various concerns, they
might have hesitated. And those differences are real. And
they'll continue," he said.
"But the fact of the matter is, is that we've been
able to kill more terrorists on Pakistani soil than just about
any place else. We could not have done that without Pakistani
cooperation. And I think that this will be an important moment
in which Pakistan and the United States gets together and say,
'All right, we've gotten bin Laden, but we've got more work to
do. And are there ways for us to work more effectively
together than we have in the past?'," he said.
"And that's gonna be important for our national
security. It doesn't mean that there aren't gonna be times
where we're gonna be frustrated with Pakistanis. And frankly,
there are gonna be times where they're frustrated with us. You
know, they've got not only individual terrorists there, but
there's also a climate inside of Pakistan that sometimes is
deeply anti-American. And it makes it more difficult for us to
be able to operate there effectively," the President said.
Obama said he did not feel the need of telling anybody
in the Pakistani government about this covert operation.
"If I'm not revealing to some of my closest aides what
we're doing', then I sure as heck am not gonna be revealing it
to folks who I don't know," he said.