Pakistan flatly denies al-Qaeda collusion

Pakistan yesterday flatly denied colluding with al-Qaeda after the CIA said it refused to tell Islamabad about the raid on Osama bin Laden, fearing the terror kingpin might be tipped off.
"It's easy to say that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) or elements within the government were in cahoots with the al-Qaeda," the top civil servant at the foreign ministry, Salman Bashir, told a news conference.
"This is a false hypothesis. This is a false charge. It cannot be validated on any account and it flies in the face of what Pakistanis and in particular the Inter-Services Intelligence has been able to accomplish."
Bashir spoke at the first news conference by a senior Pakistani government official in the country since bin Laden was killed.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama laid a wreath of red, white, and blue flowers at Ground Zero in New York yesterday, on a trip to bring closure to September 11 families.
Obama solemnly bowed his head and observed a moment of silence after laying the wreath at a spot where the famed twin towers of the World Trade Centre stood.
Obama later met relatives of victims of the attacks and took time out to meet firefighters and police, to acknowledge their heavy losses on the day of the attacks.
CIA director Leon Panetta said the Americans ruled out telling Islamabad about the planned raid against bin Laden's compound as they feared their Pakistani counterparts might alert the al-Qaeda chief.
Bashir did not directly respond to comments from the White House that US President Barack Obama reserved the right to take action again in Pakistan, but said there were "a number of questions" about how the covert raid took place.
A mainstream religious party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has called for protests Friday to denounce the US operation and Islamabad has to tread a fine line between its powerful ally in Washington and alienating its own people.
However, the government in Islamabad stopped short of labelling Monday's helicopter raid as an illegal operation and insisted relations between Washington and Islamabad remain on course.
Meanwhile, Pakistan yesterday said it wanted Washington to reduce its military personnel in the country and threatened to review cooperation in case of another raid similar to that which killed Osama bin Laden.