ISLAMABAD - The U.S. faces the challenge of quickly establishing alternative facilities from which to launch drone aircraft inside Afghanistan after Pakistan ordered U.S. personnel and hardware out of a base believed to have been used in the past for CIA drones, two senior Western defense officials tell CBS News. Concern mounted Wednesday over the future of Pakistan's clandestine support for Washington's use of drones after the country's defense minister announced Pakistan had told the U.S. to vacate the small Shamsi air base in the southwestern Baluchistan province.
Only "Pakistani aircraft will be flown from Shamsi in future," Pakistani defense minister Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar told reporters. "No U.S. aircraft will fly from Shamsi."
"U.S. personnel will not be allowed to use the Shamsi air base," a senior Pakistani government official added to CBS News.
Another senior Pakistani official, who spoke Thursday to CBS News on condition of anonymity, said there previously "have been U.S. activities at the Shamsi air base. All those activities are being ceased now."
The news comes as the Obama administration details its new strategy for combating extremism across the globe -- a strategy which shifts the focus sharply away from the large-scale ground operations espoused by President George W. Bush, to smaller "surgical" strikes like drone attacks.
for more detail visit cbsnews
0 comments:
Post a Comment