White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama believed Saturday’s attack which threw US-Pakistani ties into turmoil was “a tragedy,” adding that “we mourn those brave Pakistani service members that lost their lives.”
“We take this matter very seriously,” said Carney, adding that two inquiries by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and US Central Command would examine what took place. “As for our relationship with Pakistan, it continues to be an important cooperative relationship that is also very complicated,” Carney said.
“It is very much in America’s national security interest to maintain a cooperative relationship with Pakistan because we have shared interests in the fight against terrorism,” Carney said.
Meanwhile, the US military officials are awaiting answers from two military probes into a cross-border attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers over the weekend and deeply inflamed US-Pakistan ties, a US official said on Monday.
A US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that officials conducting an initial Nato investigation into Saturday’s incident had returned to Kabul and were putting their findings together. It is unclear when the findings will be presented. In part because the facts of the incident remain murky even several days later, US Central Command will dispatch a team to conduct its own investigation, the official said. “It’s a significant event; we want to get to the bottom of what happened,” he said.
Senior US officials say that while they had been hoping that direct communication between Pakistani and Afghan military officials along the border would take root, it has not been happening. Such communication remains facilitated by the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf).
