London: Deal between the United States and Pakistan to get Osama Bin Laden had been made almost a decade ago in the tenure of former military chief general Pervez Musharraf, a British newspaper claimed.
The Guardian reported that the secret deal permitting a US operation to get Osama Bin Laden, Aiman al Zawahiri, and the Al Qaeda No3 on Pakistani soil.
The deal was struck between the military leader General Pervez Musharraf and President George Bush after Bin Laden escaped US forces in the mountains of Tora Bora in 2001, according to serving and retired Pakistani and US officials.
The deal allowed US forces to conduct a unilateral raid inside Pakistan in search of Al Qaeda leadership, and Pakistan would only verbally protest the storm.
“There was an accord between President Bush and Musharraf that if we knew where Osama was, we were going to come and get him,” said a former senior US official. “The Pakistanis would raise a hue and cry, but they would not stop us.”
The report puts a new complexion on the political storm triggered by Bin Laden’s death in Abbottabad where a team of US Navy Seals commandos ambushed Bin Laden’s hideout on May 02.
A senior Pakistani official said the deal had been taken place under Musharraf and renewed by the army during the “transition to democracy” – a six-month period from February 2008 when Musharraf was president but a civilian government had been elected.
However, former Pervez Musharraf while talking to a private Pakistani TV channel (ARY News) categorically denied any such deal with the former US president Bush.
He said the US military raid was an open violation of Pakistan’s integrity, and it was an failure of Pakistani intelligence agencies.
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