Obama Says Bin Laden Had 'Support Network' in Pakistan

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Obama Says Bin Laden Had 'Support Network' in Pakistan

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Posted GMT 5-9-2011 0:56:41

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama says Osama bin Laden had a group of supporters within Pakistan helping to keep the al Qaeda leader secure for years, despite an American-led international manhunt that extended for nearly a decade with Islamabad's ostensible support.

Top U.S. officials insist Pakistan remains a critical U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism, but are demanding answers to troubling about questions bin Laden's presence in that country over the course of the last six years.

"We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan," Obama said in a "60 Minutes" intervie airing Sunday on CBS. "But we don't know who or what that support network was."

The president said U.S. officials "don't know whether there might have been some people inside of government (or) people outside of government, and that's something that we have to investigate."

"More importantly," he added, "the Pakistani government has to investigate."

Pakistani authorities have "indicated they have a profound interest in finding out what kinds of support networks bin Laden might have had," Obama noted. "But these are questions that we're not going to be able to answer" immediately after the raid on bin Laden's compound.

"It's going to take some time for us to be able to exploit the intelligence that we were able to gather on site," he said.

Pakistani leaders insist they didn't take part in either the establishment or the maintenance of bin Laden's safe haven, and have promised a full examination of the circumstances that allowed him spend years in Abbottabad, a city with a heavy military presence located a mere 30 miles north of the country's capital.

Asked by CNN's Fareed Zakaria whether bin Laden's presence in Pakistan could be chalked up to "duplicity or incompetence," Pakistan's U.S. ambassador, Husain Haqqani, said Sunday he couldn't provide an explanation.

"I think the best way to move forward is to wait for the findings of an internal (investigation) -- a look at the issue," Haqqani said. "I do not think that speculation is going to solve any problem."

Pakistan's government "did not have a policy of protecting these people," he asserted during an interview on ABC's "This Week."

Obama's national security adviser, Tom Donilon, told CNN's Candy Crowley he has not seen any information to indicate Pakistani officials knew bin Laden was living in Abbottabad.

But if evidence is discovered that is "highly disturbing, we'll certainly press that," he said.

Donilon's comments came amid calls in Congress and elsewhere to cut U.S. financial assistance in Pakistan, which currently receives roughly $1.5 billion in annual aid.

Last week, CIA Director Leon Panetta -- nominated by Obama to succeed Robert Gates as defense secretary -- told House members during a closed-door briefing that Pakistan was "either involved or incompetent," according to two sources in attendance.

"We'll clearly be working with (Pakistani authorities) to understand how we got to this point," Donilon said. He stressed, however, that "more terrorists and extremists have been captured or killed (in Pakistan) than any other place in the world."

"We need to look at this in a calm and cool way," he said. There is a lot "at stake in that region."

"Questions are being raised quite aggressively in Pakistan," Donilon later added on ABC's "This Week." Authorities there "need to do an investigation."

www.aina.org/news/20110508195641.htm

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