ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan’s parliament condemned yesterday the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden, warning Pakistan might cut supply lines to US forces in Afghanistan if there were further military incursions.
According to one legislator, Pakistan’s intelligence chief told a closed session of MPs he was ready to resign over the bin Laden affair, which has embarrassed the country and led to accusations Pakistani security agents knew where the al Qaeda chief was hiding.
There has been criticism of the government and military, partly because bin Laden had apparently remained undetected in Pakistan for years, but also because of the failure to detect or stop the US operation to get him.
“Parliament … condemned the unilateral action in Abbottabad which constitutes a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty,” it said in a resolution issued after security chiefs briefed legislators.
The covert raid by US special forces on bin Laden’s house in the garrison town of Abbottabad, 50 km (30 miles) north of Islamabad, has strained already prickly ties with the United States and prompted revenge attacks by his supporters.
Yesterday, a bomb ripped through a bus in Khairian, a small garrison town in central Pakistan, killing at least five people and wounding more than a dozen, police said.
The attack came a day after two suicide bombers attacked a military academy in a northwestern town killing 80 people in what Pakistani Taliban militants said was their first act of revenge for bin Laden’s death on May 2.
Pakistan has dismissed as absurd any suggestion that authorities knew bin Laden was holed up in a high-walled compound near the country’s top military academy.
