(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada / ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - December 6, 2011: Pakistan is pulling its troops out of at least two of the three centers meant to coordinate military activity across the Afghan border in apparent retaliation for NATO airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, U.S. military officials said.
The move will hamper U.S. efforts to liaise with Pakistani forces, increasing the risk that something could go wrong again, said the officials late Monday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The U.S. and Pakistan have offered different accounts of what led to the NATO attacks against two army posts along the Afghan border before dawn on Nov. 26, but the deadly incident seems to have been caused in part by communication breakdowns.
The soldiers' deaths have plunged the already strained U.S.-Pakistan relations to an all-time low, threatening Washington's attempts to get Pakistan to cooperate on the Afghan war despite billions of dollars in American aid.
Pakistan retaliated immediately by closing its Afghan border crossings to NATO supplies, demanding the U.S. vacate an air base used by American drones and boycotting an international conference held Monday in Bonn, Germany, aimed at stabilizing Afghanistan.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told The Associated Press in an interview Monday that Pakistan wants to repair relations with the United States.
But the military's decision to abandon the border coordination centers shows it is still outraged over the incident, which it has called deliberate - an allegation denied by the U.S. The Pakistan army is considered the strongest organization in Pakistan and will likely determine the future course of ties with the U.S.
Pakistan may still have troops at the coordination center in Torkham in the country's northwest Khyber tribal area, but has pulled out of the other two along the border, said the U.S. officials.
The Pakistani military did not immediately respond to request for comment.
NATO attacks have killed Pakistani troops at least three different times along the porous and poorly defined border since 2008, but the incident on Nov. 26 in the Mohmand tribal area was by far the most deadly.
U.S. officials have said the incident occurred when a joint U.S. and Afghan patrol requested air support after coming under fire. The U.S. checked with the Pakistan military to see if there were friendly troops in the area and were told there were not, they said.
Pakistan has said the coordinates given by the Americans were wrong - an allegation denied by U.S. defense officials. Pakistani officials have also said the attack continued even after military authorities contacted one of the border coordination centers, possibly explaining Islamabad's decision to curtail its participation with them.
Gilani said Monday that negotiating new ties with the U.S. would ensure that the two countries "respected each other's red lines" regarding sovereignty and rules of engagement along the border.
"We really want to have good relations with the U.S. based on mutual respect and clearly defined parameters," he said in the interview at his residence in the eastern city of Lahore.
Despite Gilani's gentler rhetoric, the gulf between the two nations remains wide. U.S. officials have said the airstrikes have been the most serious blow to a relationship that has been battered by a series of crises this year, including the covert American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town in May. Pakistan was outraged because it wasn't told about the operation beforehand.
The Obama administration wants continued engagement even as Pakistan's refusal to attack militant sanctuaries along the border over the last three years has fueled criticism in Congress the country is a duplicitous ally unworthy of American aid.
Many U.S. officials regard Pakistani cooperation as vital for peace talks with Afghan insurgent leaders to succeed because many of the leaders live in Pakistan and have ties to its security forces. The country, home to 180 million people, has nuclear weapons and a thriving Islamist militant insurgency of its own that is giving support to al-Qaida operatives. Containing that threat requires good intelligence cooperation for several years to come.
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