Drones multiply militants: FM Hina
10 February, 2012
Moscow: American drones hitting targets on Pakistani territory is illegal, and involvement of the Pakistani spy agencies with Taliban not even worthy of comment, said Pakistan's Foreign Minister, exclusive to Russian English news channel "RT" on Thursday.
Attacks by US drones on Pakistani territory are illegal and cannot be tolerated, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar told RT.
In a recent development, a US drone strike killed four people in the Pakistani northwest tribal region on Thursday. On Wednesday nine people were killed in another attack, including some Taliban fighters. These follow tensions between the Pakistani government and the US administration over American air strikes last year that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani troops.
According to the minister, the US attacks promote extremist moods in the region.
"Drones are not only completely illegal and unlawful and have no authorization to be used within the domains of international law but even more importantly, they are counter-productive to the objective of getting this region rid of militancy, and terrorism and extremism," Hina Rabbani Khar said.
"Because if one strike leads to getting you target number one or target number three today, you are creating five more targets or 10 more targets in the militancy that it breeds, in the fodder that it gives to the militants to attract more people to join their ranks," Pakistan first woman and youngest foreign minister said.
"We are today in Pakistan suffering from the consequences of what many other powers of the world decided to do in that region to rid itself of the challenge that appeared in 1979, which was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan," she added. "In trying to deal with that we have created certain groups which are today a challenge to everybody," she added.
Allegations that the Pakistani security forces maintain close contact with Taliban and even sponsor them are old and do not even "worth a comment," Hina Rabbani Khar told RT.
"I think every intelligence agency in the world maintains ties with one group or the other and all of them at some level," she said. "These ties are now pretty much out at the open because people are openly talking about talking to these people. This is something which is not even worth a comment," Khar said.
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