The White House on Wednesday endorsed Senator John Kerry's trip to Pakistan, which is aimed at easing a confrontation with the key US anti-terror ally over the killing of Osama bin Laden. Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, who acts independently but often in concert with the Obama administration, is due to visit Pakistan early next week.
"We encourage the trip he is making," said White House spokesman Jay Carney, though declined to say whether the former 2004 Democratic presidential nominee would be carrying a specific message from Obama. Carney said Kerry's trip was "important and part of the overall efforts by the United States government to continue our collaborative relationship with Pakistan and the co-operation that we've seen in the past.
"While we don't always see eye-to-eye on the issues ... our co-operation has led to some very important successes in our war against al Qaeda." Meanwhile, Chairman of the US House Intelligence Committee said some people in Pakistan may have known Osama bin Laden was living near Islamabad, but it is not apparent he was being sheltered by senior officials.
"Today, from all the information I have seen, we can't conclusively say that somebody senior knew and promoted safe haven," said Representative Mike Rogers. "Clearly there may have been elements that knew and looked the other way. But we can't say the institutions, yet, knew and looked the other way," Rogers, a Republican, told a Washington think-tank.
Pakistan has rejected allegations that the killing of bin Laden by US special forces on May 2 showed Pakistan was either complicit in hiding the al Qaeda leader, or simply incompetent. The fact that bin Laden was found hiding in the garrison town of Abbottabad, 30 miles (50 km) from the capital, has led to accusations that Pakistani security agencies were either incompetent or sheltering the world's most wanted man. US President Barack Obama has said bin Laden likely had some sort of support network inside Pakistan, but that it would take investigations by Pakistan and the United States to get a better picture of that support.
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