Thaindian News

Islamabad, May 9 (IANS) The Pakistani government will probe how Osama bin Laden was able to live in that country undetected.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told parliament Monday that a probe will be initiated into how Osama was able to live in the garrison city of Abbottabad undetected.

He insisted that allegations of Pakistani complicity and incompetence were “absurd”.

US President Barack Obama has urged Pakistan to probe the suspected network that sustained Osama, BBC reported. Obama said it had to find out if any officials knew of his whereabouts.

In a statement to Pakistani MPs about the raid by US special forces which led to the death of Osama last week, Gilani said Lt-Gen Javed Iqbal would lead the investigation into the failures to detect the Al Qaeda leader.

“We are determined to get to the bottom of how, when and why about OBL’s presence in Abbottabad,” BBC quoted Gilani as saying.

There have been suspicions that someone in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency, which has a long history of contacts with militant groups, may have known where Osama was hiding, it said.

But Gilani told MPs that the ISI, and the military, had the full support and confidence of the government.

He said the US raid was “a violation of sovereignty”, and suggested that Washington had helped create Al Qaeda during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

US officials said the Abbottabad compound was a command and control centre from where Osama had actively led Al Qaeda.

Osama was gunned down by US commandos May 2 during a raid on the compound.