巴基斯坦政府秘密为美军无人机提供基地
(2009-02-14 05:33:56)
标签:
军事 |
巴基斯坦政府秘密为美军无人机提供基地
来自落杉矶时报消息:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-uspakistan13-2009feb13,0,4776260.story
Diane Feinstein's comment on U.S. drones likely to embarrass
Pakistan The Predator planes that launch missile strikes against
militants are based in Pakistan, the senator says. That suggests a
much deeper relationship with the U.S. than Islamabad would like to
admit.
Reporting from Washington -- A senior U.S. lawmaker said Thursday
that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown
from an air base in that country, a revelation likely to embarrass
the Pakistani government and complicate its counter-terrorism
collaboration with the United States.
The disclosure by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of
the Senate Intelligence Committee, marked the first time a U.S.
official had publicly commented on where the Predator aircraft
patrolling Pakistan take off and land.
At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise over Pakistani
opposition to the campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes
against Islamic extremist targets along Pakistan's northwestern
border.
"As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base," she
said.
The basing of the pilotless aircraft in Pakistan suggests a much
deeper relationship with the United States on counter-terrorism
matters than has been publicly acknowledged. Such an arrangement
would be at odds with protests lodged by officials in Islamabad,
the capital, and could inflame anti-American sentiment in the
country.
The CIA declined to comment, but former U.S. intelligence
officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the
sensitivity of the information, confirmed that Feinstein's account
was accurate.
Philip J. LaVelle, a spokesman for Feinstein, said her comment was
based solely on previous news reports that Predators were operated
from bases near Islamabad.
"We strongly object to Sen. Feinstein's remarks being characterized
as anything other than a reference" to an article that appeared
last March in the Washington Post, LaVelle said. Feinstein did not
refer to newspaper accounts during the hearing.
Many counter-terrorism experts have assumed that the aircraft take
off from U.S. military installations in Afghanistan and are
remotely piloted from locations in the United States. Experts said
the disclosure could create political problems for the government
in Islamabad, which is considered relatively weak.
The attacks are extremely unpopular in Pakistan, in part because of
the high number of civilian casualties inflicted in dozens of
strikes.
The use of Predators armed with Hellfire antitank missiles has
emerged as perhaps the most important tool of the U.S. in its
effort to attack Al Qaeda in its sanctuaries along the
Pakistani-Afghan border. A New Year's Day strike killed two senior
Al Qaeda operatives who were suspected of involvement in the
bombing of Islamabad's Marriott Hotel.
They were among at least eight senior Al Qaeda figures reportedly
killed in Predator strikes over the last seven months as part of a
stepped-up missile campaign.
Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said
Feinstein's comments put Pakistan's government on the spot.
"If accurate, what this says is that Pakistani involvement, or at
least acquiescence, has been much more extensive than has
previously been known," he said. "It puts the Pakistani government
in a far more difficult position [in terms of] its credibility with
its own people. Unfortunately it also has the potential to threaten
Pakistani-American relations."
As chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Feinstein is
privy to classified details of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts. The
CIA does not publicly acknowledge a campaign against Pakistan-based
extremists using remotely piloted planes, making Feinstein's
comment all the more unusual.
Feinstein's disclosure came during testimony before the Senate
Intelligence Committee by U.S. Director of National Intelligence
Dennis C. Blair on the nation's security threats. Blair did not
respond directly to Feinstein's remark, except to say that Pakistan
was "sorting out" its cooperation with the United States.
Pakistani officials have long denied that they have even granted
the U.S. permission to fly the Predator planes over Pakistani
territory, let alone to operate the aircraft from within the
country.
The civilian leadership that took over from an unpopular former
general, Pervez Musharraf, last year, has gone to significant
lengths to distance itself from the Predator strikes.
The Pakistani government regularly lodges diplomatic protests
against the strikes as a violation of its sovereignty, and
officials said the subject was raised with Richard C. Holbrooke, a
newly appointed U.S. envoy to the region, who completed his first
visit to the country Thursday.
But a former CIA official familiar with the Predator operations
said Pakistan's government secretly approves of the flights because
of the growing militant threat.
Feinstein prefaced her comment about the Predator basing Thursday
by noting that Holbrooke "ran into considerable concern about the
use of the Predator strikes in the FATA areas," a reference to what
Pakistan calls its Federally Administered Tribal Area along the
border with Afghanistan.
Many Pakistanis believe that the civilian leadership, despite
public anger, has continued Musharraf's policy of giving the United
States tacit permission to carry out the strikes.
The CIA has been working to step up its presence in Pakistan in
recent years. It has deployed as many as 200 people to the country,
one of its largest overseas operations besides Iraq, current and
former agency officials have estimated. That contingent works
alongside other U.S. operatives who specialize in electronic
communications and spy satellites.
In his prepared testimony Thursday, Blair said that Al Qaeda had
"lost significant parts of its command structure since 2008."