Pakistan’s Zardari says bin Laden raid was not joint operation

Wednesday, 4 May 2011 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces was not a joint operation with Pakistan, the president of Pakistan said in an opinion column published on Monday.

President Asif Ali Zardari also said in the Washington Post that the whereabouts of the al Qaeda leader, who was killed in a town some two hours north of Islamabad, was not known to the Pakistani authorities.

“He was not anywhere we had anticipated he would be, but now he is gone,” he wrote. “Although the events of Sunday were not a joint operation, a decade of cooperation and partnership between the United States and Pakistan led up to the elimination of Osama bin Laden as a continuing threat to the civilized world.”