Probe needed whether anyone in Pak govt provided support:Obama

Lalit K Jha
Washington, May 9 (PTI) Raising questions about the
possibility that "some people inside of government" in
Pakistan may have been involved in providing support structure
for the slain terrorist Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad,
President Barack Obama has called for investigations both by
Pakistan and US into it.
"We don't know whether there might have been some
people inside of government, people outside of government, and
that's something that we have to investigate and more
importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate," he
told the '60 Minutes' show on 'CBS News' in his first
interview after bin Laden's death.
"We think that there had to be some sort of support
network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan. But we don't know
who or what that support network was," Obama said.
His comments came as his top security advisor said
there was no evidence so far that the Pakistan Government knew
about the al-Qaeda chief's presence in the country.
"We have already communicated to them, and they have
indicated they have a profound interest in finding out what
kinds of support networks bin Laden might have had.
"But these are questions that we're not gonna be able
to answer three or four days after the event. It's gonna take
some time for us to be able to exploit the intelligence that
we were able to gather on site," Obama said.
Refraining from making any adverse comment on Pakistan
given that stakes are high right now, Obama said he has to be
careful about sources and methods and how America operates and
how it pieced together this intelligence, because they are
still be going after terrorists in the future.
"What I can say is that Pakistan, since 9/11, has been
a strong counterterrorism partner with us. There have been
times where we've had disagreements. There have been times
where we wanted to push harder, and for various concerns, they
might have hesitated. And those differences are real. And
they'll continue," he said.
"But the fact of the matter is, is that we've been
able to kill more terrorists on Pakistani soil than just about
any place else. We could not have done that without Pakistani
cooperation.
"And I think that this will be an important moment
in which Pakistan and the United States gets together and say,
'All right, we've gotten bin Laden, but we've got more work to
do. And are there ways for us to work more effectively
together than we have in the past?'," he said.
"And that's gonna be important for our national
security. It doesn't mean that there aren't gonna be times
where we're gonna be frustrated with Pakistanis," he said.
The President said frankly there were going to be
times be times "where they're frustrated with us"
"You know, they've got not only individual terrorists
there, but there's also a climate inside of Pakistan that
sometimes is deeply anti-American. And it makes it more
difficult for us to be able to operate there effectively," the
President said.
Obama said he did not feel the need of telling
anybody in the Pakistani government about this covert
operation.
"If I'm not revealing to some of my closest aides
what we're doing', then I sure as heck am not gonna be
revealing it to folks who I don't know," he said.