Pakistani forces were not targeted: US

WASHINGTON : The United States is for better coordination between Pakistani forces and international forces on Afghan side of the border, a senior State Department official said while denying suggestions that the U.S. forces targeted Pakistani military in the Mohmand border strike incident last week. Donald Camp, a senior official on South Asian Affairs, was confident that through a joint probe the two countries would get to the bottom of what actually happened.
“I can certainly say that there was no targeting of Pakistani military, absolutely not,” Donald Camp a senior State Department official for South Asia told a conference of Pakistani American Congress, where he also acknowledged the country’s massive anti-terror efforts on the Afghan border.
Commenting on contents of a New York Times story, Camp said the circumstances of what actually happened in Mohmand tribal border area are still murky. “But the U.S. forces are by no means targeting Pakistani security forces,” he stressed in reply to a question on the incident which resulted in the death of 11 Pakistani personnel deployed on the border post.
At the Pentagon, Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said the Pakistani military is “an organization we work very closely with, and we take them at their word. When they tell us that some of their members were killed in that attack—and if that is indeed the case, that is most regrettable and unfortunate, and we express our sympathy to their families.”
“That said, this is a matter that still has to be investigated, and we are now in the earliest stages of that investigation.” Camp, who is Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, was confident that the two counties would get to conclusions very soon.
Pakistan had reacted strongly to the incident calling it a cowardly action and Islamabad’s envoy in Washington said Tuesday that the unfortunate incident had hurt the Pakistani nation.
The New York Times in a dispatch from Islamabad reported that the incident threatened to put on hold a U.S. plan for training of a Pakistani paramilitary force in the border region as some officials saw it a deliberate fire.
On Pakistan’s counterterrorism efforts, Camp said, the country has been doing an “enormous amount” in attempting to control its tribal areas along Afghan border.
There are more than 100,000 Pakistani security forces in and around the border and that is a very important consideration. “What we have to have is better understanding of what is going on the border, better coordination, that is why I talked about the border coordination centers so that security forces in Afghanistan can talk to security forces in Pakistan so that we have an understanding of what is going on there, trying to avoid the tragic incident that happened in Mohmand area.”
I think President “Karzai saying Pakistan can do more or should do more is his personal view,” he replied when asked about Kabul’s recent assertions that Pakistan needs to do more.