Pakistan condemns civilian killings by Nato

26 Jun, 2007

Pakistan has condemned and protested to the Nato-led forces in Afghanistan over the missile fired by International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that hit a building inside Pakistan killing more than 10 civilians.
Foreign Office Spokesperson Tasnim Aslam reiterated in weekly news briefing that in the execution of international war against terrorism any action to be taken inside Pakistan territory has to be taken by the Pakistani forces.
She said: "there is co-ordination between Pakistani and Nato forces in terms of war against terrorism and in terms of pursuing undesirable elements that may want to cross over into Pakistan or vice versa." "This co-ordination is in the context of taking action against certain elements," she added.
She said: "We know that it is a difficult situation. There are many operations undertaken by Nato on the other side on the occasion, especially when these elements are trying to cross over into Pakistan."
The spokesperson said there might be a lack of co-ordination and such incidents might happen, but we do not want any action by Nato forces on our side of international border.
She said this incident underscored the need for better co-ordination, care and restraint by Nato forces, specially when they were operating near the Pakistan border.
UNGRATEFULNESS OF FAMILIES OF INDIAN MISSING PERSONS:
In reply to a question that the families of the Indian missing persons, who visited 10 Pakistani jails this month had expressed their dissatisfaction, the spokesperson said: "its very ungrateful."
She said we were not obliged to allow this visit because efforts to find any missing person in Pakistan was undertaken in 1970's, 80's and 90s.
"It was out of consideration for these families. We allowed them to come here and visit 10 jails and assured them that there was no Indian in any military detention center and our word should have been good enough for them," she added.
Tasnim said it was a baseless allegation that Indian prisoners in Pakistan jails were maltreated.
She said: "if we had some thing to hide, we would not have taken an initiative to establish a committee of retired judges, which we are relentlessly pursing to monitor the situation of prisoners in both countries.
She said: "we consider condition of civilian prisoners as a humanitarian issue and we want this committee functional so that members of the committee could visit jails in the two countries and make recommendations so that condition of civilian prisoners is improved."

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