Gilani: US drone attacks on Pakistani territory unacceptable

Nov 20, 2008, 9:14 GMT

   Islamabad - US airstrikes inside Pakistan are unacceptable, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said Thursday, a day after a suspected US drone carried out the first US airstrike on a militant hideout outside Pakistan's tribal region.

   'Such attacks will not be tolerated,' Gilani told the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament. 'We will not allow anyone to harm our national sovereignty.'

   US forces deployed in Afghanistan have conducted dozens of air raids in recent months on Taliban and al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan's tribal region.

   But on Wednesday, an airstrike targeted a suspected militant compound in the settled Bannu district of North-West Frontier Province, killing four people and raising concerns that the United States would extend its aerial attacks to even include major cities.

   'Give the US an inch and it'll take a mile,' read a headline in The News, an English-language daily.

   The Army chief, General Ishfaq Parvez Kayani, 'urged a halt to unmanned combat aerial vehicles within Pakistan territory' during an address Wednesday to NATO's military committee in Brussels, according to a statement from country's army.

   Gilani told parliament Thursday that he hoped the administration of US president-elect Barack Obama, which takes office in January, would review its policy regarding airstrikes inside Pakistan.

   'At the moment, the US government is in transition,' he said in the house where some lawmakers demanded the government end its cooperation with the United States in the fight against terrorism. 'I am sure when the government of Senator Obama is set up, these attacks will be controlled.'

   Deputy Foreign Minister Malik Amad told parliament that his ministry had summoned US Ambassador Anne Patterson to lodge a formal protest over the Bannu attack.