Help end drone strikes, Pakistani minister to tell Hague
Foreign Secretary William Hague and his Pakistani counterpart are expected to discuss Afghanistan, terrorism and US drone strikes during talks in London.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar will make clear her opposition to pilotless drone attacks in tribal areas by the American military.
Ms Khar is also meeting US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in London on Thursday.
Pakistan’s High Commissioner in London, Wajid Shamsul Hassan, has said drone strikes near the Afghan border, using laser-guided missiles, have damaged his country’s relations with Washington.
In an interview with the Sun on 8 February, he likened the attacks on Taliban and al-Qaeda targets to war crimes, describing them as “little more than state execution”.
Civilians killed
Pakistan says drone strikes have killed civilians and destroyed schools and hospitals, and Mr Hassan told the newspaper that his government would “have to at some stage take punitive actions to stop them”.
in December 2010, Channel 4 News revealed that the number of attacks on Pakistan had doubled under the Obama administration. In 2010, there were at least 113 drone strikes in Pakistan’s Waziristan region, aimed at targets the US administration blames for attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan.
Channel 4 News reported that women and children, some with alleged links to militants, had also died.
Obama’s admission
The US administration has been traditionally cautious about confirming the existence of its unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) progamme, but President Barack Obama spoke candidly about it in January.
He described them as “very precise, precision strikes against al-Qaeda and their affiliates”, saying that “obviously a lot of these strikes” have been used in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
He added that the programme was “kept on a very tight leash”and was not used “willy-nilly”, but as an alternative to military action.
Mrs Clinton is expected for a conference on Somalia organised by the Foreign Office. The issue of piracy off the Somali coast will be on the agenda.
