Embarrassed Pak struggles to explain Osama in military area

8220;We had been looking for him in no-go areas,unaware that he was living so close to an installation of ours. Yes,it is an intelligence failure,8221; a senior unnamed military official told the 8216;Dawn8217; newspaper,giving a new spin.

An unnamed senior Army officer acknowledged to 8216;The News8217; daily that the US would have gone to any length to get the man behind the 9/11 terror attacks.

8220;The stakes were very,very high. In order to reach Osama,the US would disregard anything standing in its way: whether Pakistanis,the Army,intelligence,anything,8221; the officer was quoted as saying.

The officer further said there was 8220;no intelligence-sharing this time8221; and that the US had carried out a 8220;very swift operation8221;.

Pakistan had its limitations and,in the final analysis,was better off with the death of bin Laden,he contended.

As Pakistani military officials tried to play down the killing of bin Laden in a compound less than a kilometre from the Pakistan Military Academy,8221;they found very few takers of their explanation8221;,the 8216;Dawn8217; reported.

8220;This was hardly surprising as it is hard to believe that the paranoid security agencies never conducted a reconnaissance of the vicinity of their main training facility during times when military installations faced a continuous threat of terrorist attacks,8221; the report said.

8220;Odder still is the fact that the military authorities or the intelligence sleuths never felt the need to find out who was using a heavily guarded structure that was protected by barbed wires and fortified walls and had the extra precaution of surveillance cameras,8221; it said.

The 8216;Dawn8217; reported it was 8220;tragically comical8221; that bin Laden8217;s compound was a stone8217;s throw from the spot where army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani attended a parade around a week ago and said publicly that his forces had broken the 8220;terrorist backbone8221;.

Though Pakistani military officials insisted they had not been taken on board by the US about the operation to get bin Laden,the Dawn noted that a 8220;flurry of activity that took place in the past week or so indicates that something was up8221;.

Allied Forces commander General David Petraeus paid a visit to Islamabad on April 25 and he is said to have held 8220;a short and crisp8221; discussion with Kayani at Chaklala airbase,an unusual venue for a meeting.

The two generals are even said to have taken a short trip to an undisclosed location in an aircraft.

The same night Petraeus joined a White House meeting chaired by President Barack Obama through teleconferencing.

Observers feel that Obama referred to that meeting in his speech yesterday in which he announced the death of bin Laden.

On April 26,Pakistan8217;s top military coordination body 8212; the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee 8212; held a session that was attended by ISI chief General Ahmed Shuja Pasha,who is not a member of the body.

The meeting was unscheduled,the 8216;Dawn8217; reported.

Another anomaly in the Pakistan military8217;s account of the raid is its explanation of how four US helicopters evaded the country8217;s air defence system for about an hour as they flew in from Jalalabad and returned after a 40-minute long raid,the daily said.

One official claimed that the helicopters succeeded in avoiding detection by flying low while another said Pakistan8217;s air defence systems were jammed by the Americans.

However,the report said this did not gel with Obama8217;s appreciation for Pakistan8217;s cooperation in the operation.

The Pakistan Foreign Office8217;s statement on bin Laden8217;s killing said the raid was carried out by US forces but was silent on Pakistan8217;s role in the operation.