[Peace-discuss] The CIA may want this more than the JCS do...

[C. G. Estabrook]

US: Strikes on Pakistan to continue
Wed Apr 20, 2011 11:31PM

The United States says it will not halt its drone attacks in Pakistan, defying 
repeated calls from Islamabad and Pakistani people for an end to the 
non-UN-sanctioned strikes.


“The program is something that we have said we go ahead on. The question is how. 
And that process is going to be something that's going to be one of the main 
tasks that our intelligence and our military guys have,” Reuters quoted a US 
official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, as saying on Wednesday.

This comes as the chairman of the US military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral 
Mike Mullen, has met with Pakistan's high-ranking intelligence officials in Lahore.

The US had previously insisted on its stance about continuing the drone attacks 
in a meeting between CIA director Leon Panetta and Lieutenant General Ahmad 
Shuja Pasha, the head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency in 
Washington last week.

Washington has at times claimed it has an agreement with Islamabad on launching 
such attacks, but Pakistani authorities say there has never been such a deal and 
that they view the airstrikes as repeated violations of the country's sovereignty.

Moreover, Pakistani lawmakers have strongly criticized the US drone strikes and 
urged the government “to review its foreign policy and adopt a strict stance to 
stop CIA attacks inside Pakistan.”

Khawaja Saad Rafiq, the leader of major Pakistani party Muslim League Nawaz, has 
blamed the hike in the acts of terrorism in Pakistan on the ongoing CIA drone 
attacks.

The CIA's unauthorized drone strikes in Pakistan's northwest tribal belt claimed 
the lives of more than 1,180 people in 2010 alone, reports say.