Pakistan rejects US probe on raids

The Pakistani army on Friday rejected a US investigation that concluded mistakes on both sides led to American airstrikes last month that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and severely damaged the already strained relationship between the two countries. The response indicates the report will do little to ease tensions, a worrying development for the US because Pakistan’s co-operation is critical for the Afghan war. The Pakistani army has said its troops did nothing wrong and claimed the attack was a deliberate act of aggression.Pakistan has retaliated by closing its Afghan border to supplies meant for Nato troops in Afghanistan and kicking the US out of a base used by American drones. Nato officials have said the closure of the supply route has not affected operations so far, but it would eventually if not reversed.“Pakistan’s army does not agree with the findings of the US/Nato inquiry as being reported in the media. The inquiry report is short on facts,” the military said in a short statement. The army will provide a detailed response after officials receive the report, it said. Pakistan refused to co-operate in the investigation. A briefing by the head of the US Central Command to Pakistani officials on a Nov.26 cross-border Nato air attack has been cancelled, a Pakistani official said on Friday.News that General James N. Mattis’ visit to Pakistan has been cancelled came a day after the United States announced that its investigation into the attack found both American and Pakistani forces were to blame for the border incident. Even though US officials on Thursday accepted some of the blame for the attack on two army posts along the Afghan border, they did not apologise for the incident, as many Pakistanis have demanded. Instead, the US said its forces were fired on first and acted “with appropriate force” in self-defence.Brig. Gen. Stephen Clark, an Air Force special operations officer who led the investigation, also said in a Pentagon briefing that US forces did not know that the two relatively new Pakistani outposts - spare structures constructed with stacked gray stones - had been set up on the border.The Pakistanis have disputed both of these points, saying its troops did not fire first and that it had given Nato maps that clearly marked where the outposts were located on a mountain ridge in the Mohmand tribal area. Clark acknowledged that the US had not informed Pakistan that American and Afghan commandos were conducting an overnight operation in Afghanistan on Nov.25-26 when the attack occurred. US and Nato commanders believe that some of their military operations have been compromised when they’ve given details and locations to the Pakistanis, he said.There is “an overarching lack of trust between the two sides” that keeps them from giving each other specific details on troops or combat outpost locations, Clark said as he went through a blow-by-blow account of the incident. He also said US forces failed to determine who was firing at them and whether there were friendly Pakistani forces in the area because they used inaccurate maps and mistakenly provided Pakistan with the wrong location where the fighting was taking place.Pakistan could seize on these admissions to lower the temperature on the crisis, but it may be difficult for the army to walk back from the categorical positions it has taken. The attack has enraged the Pakistani public, especially anti-American hardliners. Over 30,000 religious party activists staged a rally against the attack on Sunday. Analysts in Pakistan saw little in the report that would repair relations, particularly with the government and military in a standoff over alleged attempts by one of the president’s aides to rein in the power of the military.“Our military and government have promoted anti-Americanism on this issue, thereby restricting their own options to re-open negotiations with the US,” Lahore-based security analyst Hasan Askari told AFP.“We are not sure how long they will continue with this stalemate. Given the present crises in Pakistan, neither the civil government nor the military will make a positive move towards the US,” he added.