As US forces entered Pakistani airspace to hunt down Osama bin Laden without prior notification, Islamabad went into the process of scrambling its jets believing that it was an attack from India, Pakistan’s envoy here said.
Pakistan’s ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani told the popular Charlie Rose Show on PBS that an Indian incursion was presumed as Pakistan was not notified about it.
“Absolutely. They should have been because they hadn’t notified earlier and there could have been some incident. But then we also have to look at the displacement of our air systems. After all, we have always assumed that any area intrusion into our sovereign territory will come from the east,” he said.
“No, from India,” Haqqani said when asked if he was referring to Afghanistan. US special forces on May 2 killed bin Laden in Abbottabad in a covert operation and informed Pakistan only when its personnel had left Pakistani airspace.
“We have always had that configuration. And actually, all of this, all of this, the fact that bin Laden was found in Pakistan, the fact that the Americans were able to conduct this operation without us being able to act in time,” he said. He said it was not very encouraging that Pakistan was not informed beforehand even when the US and Pakistan call themselves allies and strategic partners.