U.S. Withholding $800 Million in Aid to Pakistan as Ties Reach ’Low Point’

The U.S. is withholding about $800 million in military aid to Pakistan over actions by the nuclear- armed country since the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, said White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley.
“They’ve taken some steps that have given us reason to pause on some of the aid which we’re giving to the

military, and we’re trying to work through that,” Daley said yesterday on ABC’s “This Week” program. “Until we get through these difficulties, we’ll hold back some of the money that the American taxpayers have committed to give.”
After crises this year worsened long-standing tensions, the countries’ relationship is “at its low point” following the May 2 U.S. raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader in a Pakistani army garrison town, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview with the U.S. military-affairs website This Week in Defense News that was broadcast yesterday.
In those 10 weeks, Pakistan has arrested an army major for allegedly helping the Central Intelligence Agency target bin Laden, according to U.S. officials cited by the New York Times and other newspapers, and has expelled more than 100 U.S. military personnel.
Recent criticisms of the Pakistani military by U.S. officials cited by the Times amount to “a direct attack” on Pakistan’s security, its armed forces spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, said in an interview two days ago, Reuters reported.
Anger and Humiliation
The announced aid cutoff may deepen “a feeling of anger and humiliation” that political analyst and retired Pakistani army Lieutenant General Talat Masood says has grown in the country’s military this year. Tensions have risen steadily since January, when a CIA contract employee, Raymond Davis, shot dead two Pakistani men he said were trying to rob him in Lahore.
“We have not received any formal intimation or letter from the U.S. informing us” of a decision to withhold aid, Abbas said by phone to Bloomberg News. He said Pakistan’s operations against Taliban guerrillas in the country’s northwest will be unaffected because the country has conducted them since 2009 “without any external support whatsoever.”
The New York Times, which reported the deferral of military aid earlier, said the amount being withheld represents more than a third of the $2 billion in security assistance given to Pakistan. It includes about $300 million to cover some of the costs of posting more than 100,000 Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border as well as training assistance and military hardware, the newspaper reported.
Withholding Visas
A full description of the U.S. assistance on hold is classified, said Navy Captain John Kirby, a spokesman for Mullen. Night-vision devices, helicopter spare parts, radios, and equipment to counter guerrilla-made bombs are delayed because Pakistan is withholding visas for U.S. personnel required to assist with them, Kirby said in an e-mail yesterday.
Since the bin Laden raid by U.S. Navy commandos, American officials have questioned whether some in the Pakistani military were helping to hide the al-Qaeda leader, and whether Pakistan’s investigation of the incident may be aimed more at those who might have helped the U.S. find him. The U.S. didn’t notify the Pakistani government before the raid out of fear that someone might tip off bin Laden.
“Obviously there’s still a lot of pain that the political system in Pakistan is feeling by virtue of the raid,” Daley said. “Something that the president felt strongly about. We have no regrets over.”
Support for Taliban
Another irritant in relations is Pakistan’s covert support for the Taliban and allied groups fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan, say analysts such as Imtiaz Gul, chairman of the Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad. “Pakistan is tied in to these groups because it wants to use them to gain influence over Afghanistan in coming years,” and thus block its foe, India, from gaining sway there, Gul said by phone last week.
Mullen said April 20 that Pakistan’s main military spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, still “has a longstanding relationship” with a Taliban faction led by Jalaluddin Haqqani that a recent Defense Department report called “the most significant threat” to U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said in May the U.S. should curtail more than $1 billion in annual economic aid to Pakistan unless the Islamabad government stops harboring groups such as Haqqani’s.
Mullen said July 7 there are indications that suggest the Pakistani government sanctioned last month’s abduction and killing of Saleem Shahzad, 40, a journalist who had written about the infiltration of militants in the military.
Daley echoed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement last month that U.S. interests give it no option but to work with Pakistan. “The Pakistani relationship is difficult, but it must be made to work over time,” Daley said on ABC.
Pakistan has been “an important ally in the fight on terrorism,” he said.

Whose side is Pakistan's ISI really on?

If there was one telling moment in Pakistan in the 10 days since Osama bin Laden's death, when a Hollywood-style American assault on a suburban house left the country reeling, torn between anger, shame and denial, it occurred late one evening on a prime-time television show hosted by Kamran Khan.

Chatshow hosts are the secular mullahs of modern Pakistan: fist-banging populists who preach to the nation over supper, often through a rightwing lens. Khan, a tubby 50-year-old journalist with neat glasses and a small chin, is the biggest of them. Every night on Geo, the largest channel, he rails against "corrupt" civilian politicians and America, and lionises the armed forces; some colleagues nickname him "the brigadier".

But as the country seethed over Bin Laden last week, Khan tore off his metaphorical stripes and stamped them into the ground.

The army had failed its people, he railed. To Pakistan's shame US soldiers had invaded the country; their finding Bin Laden in Abbottabad, two hours north of Islamabad, was a disgrace. The country's "two-faced" approach to extremism had disastrously backfired, he said, reeling off a list of atrocities – New York, Bali, London, Madrid – linked to Pakistan. "We have become the world's biggest haven of terrorism," he declared. "We need to change." Viewers watched in astonishment. The unprecedented attack targeted not only the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, but also the most sensitive policies of the military's premier spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI). Feared, reviled and admired in equal measure, the ISI is considered the embodiment of army power in Pakistan, the object of hushed deference. But now, as one US official told me, "the world has changed". And the ISI finds itself in the line of fire.

The Bin Laden debacle has triggered a blizzard of uncomfortable questions, the sharpest come from Washington. How, President Barack Obama wondered aloud last Sunday, could Bin Laden shelter for years in a garrison town that is home to three regimental headquarters, the local version of Sandhurst, and thousands of soldiers? One retired US officer who has served in the region told me he had been mulling the same question. "All those times we drove up to Abbottabad, and we could have taken out our pistols and done the job ourselves," he said. The CIA chief Leon Panetta, meanwhile, says he didn't warn the ISI about the special forces raid because he feared word might leak to the al-Qaida leader. Behind the pointed statements lies an urgent question: was the ISI hiding Bin Laden?

The answer may lie inside the ISI's headquarters in Abpara, on the edge of Islamabad. The entrance, beside a private hospital, is suitably discreet: no sign, just a plainclothes officer packing a pistol who direct visitors through a chicane of barriers, soldiers and sniffer dogs. But inside, past the smooth electric gates, lies a neatly tended cluster of adobe buildings separated by smooth lawns and tinkling fountains that resembles a well-funded private university. Cars purr up to the entrance of the central building, a modern structure with a round, echoing lobby. On the top floor sits the chief spy: the director general Ahmed Shuja Pasha, a grey-haired 59-year-old three-star general. One American counterpart describes him as "brilliant and extremely intelligent . . . Thoughtful, pensive and extremely well read; if he was in the US military he would be a very successful officer."

Pasha and the ISI are the heart of Pakistan's "establishment" – a nebulous web of generals, bureaucrats and hand-picked politicians (not always elected ones) who form the DNA of Pakistan's defence and security policies. It has at least 10,000 employees (some say twice as many), mixing serving army officers, many on three-year rotations from other services, with thousands of civilian employees, from suited analysts to beefy street spies. In theory they answer to the prime minister; in reality they are a tool of the army chief, Kayani. To supporters, the ISI safeguards national security – monitoring phones, guarding the country's nuclear weapons. But to its many critics, the ISI is the army's dirty tricks department, accused of abduction and assassination, vote-rigging and torture, and running Islamist terrorist outfits. "The ISI," said Minoo Bhandara, an outspoken Parsi businessman who ran a brewery across the road from army headquarters before he died in 2008, "is an institution full of intelligence but devoid of wisdom."

Oddly, it was founded by an Australian. As Pakistan recovered from its disastrous first war with India in 1948, Major General R Cawthorne, on secondment from the British army, decided the fledgling military needed a proper intelligence outfit. The first decades were inauspicious. The ISI mishandled the 1965 war with India and failed to predict the East Pakistan conflict in 1971, which sundered Pakistan in two and created Bangladesh. All changed, however, eight years later when Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan on Christmas Day 1979. The decade-long war of resistance – bankrolled by the United States, fought by Afghans and Arabs, but largely run by the ISI from Pakistan's tribal areas – revolutionised the agency's fortunes. It ran a network of secret training camps along the Afghan border that trained more than 80,000 fighters. It controlled a weapons pipeline, funded by the CIA and Saudi intelligence, that smuggled Kalashnikovs and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles from Karachi to the Khyber Pass. And it grew powerful and rich.

A legendary figure from that period was a man named Colonel Imam, whom I first met five years ago. He was tall and burly, with a thick beard and a crooked smile that suggested several missing teeth. He wore a white turban and an olive-green, British issue second world war-issue paratroop jacket, which he told me he had been wearing since he joined the army in 1971. During the 80s, Imam ran many of the ISI training camps, becoming popular among ethnic Pashtun fighters for his love of Islam and his fondness for killing Soviets. "Those were wonderful times," he told me. Although his real name was Sultan Amir, to the Afghans he became "Colonel Imam". "I loved the fight. And the mujahideen were very fond of me," he said with a smile.

The US liked him too. On the wall of his Rawalpindi home hung war trophies from the 80s – daggers, faded photos, a Russian general's gun – but on the table sat a chunk of the Berlin wall, cased in glass. "To one who helped deliver the first blow," it read. "The Americans gave me that," he said.

With the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the CIA largely abandoned Pakistan. But the spirit of "jihad" – fighters imbued with Islamist vim – lived on in the ISI. Pakistani officers, having imbibed too much of their own ideology, transformed the spy agency. It started to support Islamist groups across Asia – Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Burma, India – and the US placed Pakistan on a terrorist watchlist. In 1993, Javed Ashraf Qazi, a secular-minded general officer, was sent in to clean up the mess. "I was shocked at what I found," he tells me. Senior ISI officers had jettisoned their uniforms for shalwar kameez; their subordinates would disappear off to the mosque for hours on end. The ISI had bought a hotel in Bangkok, probably to facilitate gun-running. The outgoing spy chief, Javed Nasir, was a playboy turned zealot who had grown a scraggly beard and refused to shake women's hands. On his first day in the office Qazi found him running out of the door to a Muslim missionary conference. "When people say the ISI is a rogue agency, it was true in those days," he says.

Qazi fired the ideologues, sold the hotel and ordered his subordinates to wear their uniforms (some struggled to fit in them). "We cleaned it up," says Qazi, who later became a minister under Pervez Musharraf.

But the ISI was not done with jihad; it had merely narrowed its focus. The proof is on the wall of Qazi's home. I notice an unusual rifle hanging on the wall. It is an Indian service rifle, Qazi admits half bashfully – a present from one of the "mujahideen" fighters the ISI started to send into Indian-occupied Kashmir from the mid 90s, when he was in charge. "We turned a blind eye to some groups," he says. They included Lashkar-e-Toiba, he admits – the terrorist outfit that in 2008 would attack hotels and train stations in the Indian city of Mumbai, killing 170 people.

In the early 90s, the ISI also started to support an obscure Islamist movement in Afghanistan called the Taliban. Colonel Imam was sent back into Afghanistan to advise the one-eyed Taliban leader Mullah Omar. They had history: Imam, it turned out, had trained Omar back in the mujahideen camps in the 80s. With ISI backing, the Taliban swept to power in Kabul; at the UN in New York, a beleaguered Afghan official complained that Imam was the "de facto governor" of the newly conquered territories. "Ah, they are naughty people," Imam told me of the Taliban with his shy smile. "Rough people, good fighters, but respected. And they were all my friends."

Over the past decade, however, the ISI has professed to have abandoned jihad. As American troops swarmed across Afghanistan, in search of Bin Laden in late 2001, President General Pervez Musharraf disavowed the Taliban, sacked his most Islamist generals (including the then ISI director, Mahmud Ahmed) and brought Colonel Imam home. The following January he made a signature speech banning a slew of jihadi groups. "We need to rid society of extremism," he declared.

On the ground, though, things have looked different. US diplomatic cables released through WikiLeaks last year claimed the ISI was still covertly supporting the Afghan Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Haqqani network, as part of its decades-old grudge match with India. And despite billions of dollars in American assistance, wrote ambassador Anne Patterson, "no amount of money" was likely to make the army – or the ISI – change direction.

Simultaneously, though, the ISI has become a victim of jihadi violence. The Pakistani Taliban – related to the Afghan movement, but separate, and heavily influenced by al-Qaida – is seeking to oust the Pakistani state. The ISI, deemed to have betrayed them, has become the enemy. Hundreds of ISI officials have died in recent years, killed in bombings of buses and offices, and ISI spies have been beheaded in the tribal belt. In the latest atrocity on 8 March a massive car bomb outside an ISI office in Faisalabad destroyed an airline office and killed 32 people.

I last saw Colonel Imam in January 2010 at his home in Rawalpindi. He joked about media articles describing him as the "father of the Taliban". Weeks later he set off for Waziristan with another former ISI man, Khawaja, and a British journalist, Asad Qureshi, who had been commissioned by Channel 4, to interview the Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud. But the Taliban took them hostage. After a few weeks Khawaja was executed, after confessing on video to being a "CIA spy". Qureshi was released in September after his family paid a hefty ransom. Then last January, a video of Imam surfaced showing him kneeling before a group of masked, armed men. Mehsud appeared, and said a few words. Then a Talib opened fire, pumped Imam with bullets.

"When you're Frankenstein, and you create a lot of baby monsters who are running round your ankles looking sort of cute, they eventually grow up to be recalcitrant adults," a US official tells me in Islamabad. "And you hope you can get them back into the fold so they become useful. But the Pakistanis can't control everything they create."

Could the ISI's complex policy towards jihadi militants have caused it to harbour Bin Laden? Its many critics have little doubt, particularly in Afghanistan; last week the former Kabul spy chief Amrullah Saleh said he warned Musharraf about Bin Laden four years ago, only to be rowdily shouted down. Now Musharraf himself admits it's a possibility, albeit one limited to "rogue" officers. Yesterday he told ABC News there was a "possibility" of a "lower-level operative . . . following a policy of his own and violating the policy from above". But could it be done with the knowledge of the top generals? Opinion is split between agnostics and sceptics. "Did Pasha know? It's entirely implausible that he didn't," says a former western military official who has worked in Pakistan. A senior diplomat sees it differently. Perhaps the ISI is neither complicit or incompetent, he says. Maybe they just didn't look. "Looking for Osama may not have been a big priority when not finding him earns you billions of dollars a year, and if you did the Americans would leave the region," he says.

The ISI itself points to its consistent record in fighting al-Qaida. Over the past decade it has rounded up hundreds of Islamist suspects, many dispatched to Guantánamo Bay. They include the most notorious al-Qaida henchmen: Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, architect of the 9/11 attacks, snatched from a Rawalpindi safehouse in 2003; Ramzi bin al-Shibh, captured after a gun battle a year earlier; Abu Faraj al-Libi, then the al-Qaida number three, arrested in Mardan in 2005 by ISI commandos wearing burka disguises. Not finding Bin Laden was "a failure on our side," admits an ISI official. "Unfortunate, but a fact. We are good but we are not God."

Yet the questions remain. How did Bin Laden avoid ISI surveillance in a military area, just a few hundred metres from a major military base, in a zone where military intelligence traditionally keeps a close eye? And what about the army major who recently built his house just behind Osama's? Did he not wonder about his neighbour with the barbed-wire fence and the security cameras perched on the wall? "I find it entirely implausible that the military and intelligence agencies knew nothing," says Dr Farzana Sheikh, author of Making Sense of Pakistan. "There must have been knowledge at the highest levels." But, along with so many other critics, she concedes "there is no proof". In a country where so many pressing mysteries remain unresolved – from the plane crash that killed General Zia ul-Haq in 1988, to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in 2007 – few are holding their breath.

There could, at least, be accountability, although hopes are fading fast. As television anchors raged and criticism of the army swelled last week, some hoped Pakistan's civilian leadership would seize the moment to claw back part of the power it has ceded over the past 30 years. Yet those hopes were dashed on Monday when prime minister Gilani stood up in parliament for a stout defence of the generals. "The ISI is a national asset," he said. The battle, if it had ever been contemplated, was lost.

In America the scrutiny will not vanish so easily. Angry congressional leaders have called for Pakistan's $3bn annual aid package to be slashed; hostile media coverage portraying the ISI as an enemy unit is growing. Government officials, however, are more circumspect. With Nato's main military supply line running through Pakistan, other al-Qaida figures still at large including Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and a peace settlement to be negotiated in Afghanistan, many quietly speak of the need to eventually patch up the Pakistan relationship – although few doubt that it has been utterly changed over the past 10 days. "We can't break it, it's too important," says one US official. "We're going to have to sit down across the table and try and tell some truths to each other."

Still, he adds: "There are degrees in truth. We would like to have a degree of the truth."

American popular opinion may be less nuanced. The forthcoming trial of David Headley, an American jihadi accused of helping Lashkar-e-Taiba carry out the Mumbai attacks, is likely to bring fresh accusations of ISI "double-game". And movie culture is likely to have a strong influence. Even before Bin Laden died an action thriller called tentatively "Kill Bin Laden", by Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow, was in the works. Now many more will surely follow. In the coming months, casting directors will start seeking actors to play macho navy Seals, a tense American president and an elusive Saudi fugitive. And, almost certainly, they will be looking for a clutch of double-dealing Pakistani spies. In the ISI, Hollywood may have found a new bad guy.

Pakistan government skipping chance to weaken army

The U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden gave Pakistan's weak civilian government a rare chance to wrest some power away from an influential military establishment that suddenly faced unusual public criticism over its failure to detect the al-Qaida leader and prevent the foreign incursion.

Instead, the ruling party is defending the army and allowing it to investigate its own intelligence fiasco, undermining the notion that Pakistan's elected leaders will ever be able to assert their full authority in a country prone to military coups. The civilians' timidity doesn't bode well for U.S. and Pakistani hopes that the nuclear-armed nation will evolve into a stable democracy.

"The civilian-military imbalance is the greatest threat to Pakistani democracy. It is also the issue the civilian politicians are least capable of tackling," said Cyril Almeida, a prominent Pakistani commentator.

It's not easy for the ruling Pakistan People's Party to take on the army, even as the military brass reel from the humiliation of the U.S. raid.

The May 2 Navy SEALs operation in Abbottabad left bin Laden and at least four others dead, giving the U.S. a huge victory against al-Qaida. Pakistan's military said it had no warning of the raid, disappointing many citizens, some of whom said the army and intelligence chiefs should resign.

The popular uproar was extraordinary in a country where many live in fear of the security forces.

But the civilian government itself is deeply unpopular. It is generally regarded as less competent than — and at least as corrupt as — the military. Its failure to address the pressing problems in Pakistan — a struggling economy, chronic power shortages, deteriorating security — has disillusioned many Pakistanis who were thrilled to see it take power three years ago after nearly a decade of military rule.

At this point, the government's sole focus appears to be surviving for a full five-year term. That would be a historic achievement for a democratically elected government in the nation's 63 years of existence, but one which apparently has left the current administration too nervous to challenge the generals.

The wariness showed in the changing messages that have emanated from Islamabad since the raid on bin Laden's compound north of the capital. At first, the country's civilian leaders declared bin Laden's killing a great victory. But within days, the Foreign Ministry had issued a statement that slammed the U.S. for violating Pakistan's sovereignty and warned against any future raids. The army issued a similar warning.

At the same time, the military appeared to launch a subtle campaign to shift the blame to the civilians.

Former Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, a People's Party member who has tangled with the party leadership and is believed to be close to the military, publicly called on President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to resign. That raised many eyebrows considering Gilani and Zardari have essentially no control over security issues, and have ceded to the army much of the country's foreign policy as well.

On Monday, Gilani addressed Pakistan's parliament in a speech that appeared heavily influenced by the military and the army-run spy network. Although he said bin Laden's death was "indeed justice done," he also heaped praise on his nation's armed forces and its Inter-Services Intelligence agency. He said "all the intelligence agencies of the world" failed in allowing bin Laden to hide in a garrison town Pakistan.

Instead of appointing an independent, or at least civilian-led, panel to probe the debacle, he said the military would handle the investigation.

That drew criticism from some Pakistanis, who noted that the military does not have much of a history of holding its leadership accountable for mistakes.

For instance, in 1999, then-army chief Pervez Musharraf masterminded an operation at Kargil, a Pakistani push into the Indian-held part of Kashmir. The offensive nearly brought the nuclear-armed neighbors to war, but Musharraf kept his job, and later that year ousted the civilian government.

"The history of heads rolling and the history of people being held to account is not a very bright one in Pakistan," said Ayaz Amir, an opposition lawmaker.

Some were hoping Gilani would push for a rethink of Pakistan's entire security policy, which many critics say is too focused on archrival India instead of the threat from Islamist insurgents threatening the Pakistani state. Pakistan's army has fought three wars with India, including one in 1971 that saw Pakistan's eastern flank break off and become Bangladesh.

"Gilani did not take this opportunity to launch a kind of transformation or sort of commission that this country desperately requires," said Mosharraf Zaidi, a Pakistani columnist. "So I think Pakistanis, in general, continue to be confused and continue to want real answers instead of rhetoric."

In many ways, the most frustrating thing for many Pakistanis is watching the one institution that seemed all-powerful in their downtrodden, struggling country, be so spectacularly hoodwinked by the United States. But it's also tough to watch the men and women they elect flounder.

"The common man is really pissed off. They've lost faith," said Khawaja Asif, an opposition lawmaker. "You can't imagine how sad they are feeling."

Bin Laden assault team was prepared to fight Pakistani forces

President Obama insisted that the assault force hunting down Osama bin Laden last week be large enough to fight its way out of Pakistan if confronted by hostile local police officers and troops, senior administration and military officials said yesterday

In revealing additional details about planning for the mission, senior officials also said that two teams of specialists were on standby: one to bury bin Laden if he was killed, and a second composed of lawyers, interrogators, and translators in case he was captured alive.

That team was set to meet aboard a Navy ship, most likely the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in the North Arabian Sea.

Obama’s decision to increase the size of the force sent into Pakistan shows that he was willing to risk a military confrontation with a close ally in order to capture or kill the leader of Al Qaeda.

Such a fight would have set off an even larger breach with the Pakistanis than has taken place since officials in Islamabad learned that helicopters filled with members of a Navy SEALs team had flown into one of their cities and burst into a compound where bin Laden was hiding.

One senior Obama administration official, pressed on the rules of engagement for one of the riskiest clandestine operations attempted by the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command in many years, said: “Their instructions were to avoid any confrontation if at all possible. But if they had to return fire to get out, they were authorized to do it.’’

The planning also illustrates how little the administration trusted the Pakistanis as they set up their operation. They also rejected a proposal to bring the Pakistanis in on the mission.

Under the original plan, two assault helicopters were going to stay on the Afghanistan side of the border, waiting for a call if they were needed. But the aircraft would have been about 90 minutes away from the bin Laden compound.

About 10 days before the raid, Obama reviewed the plans and pressed his commanders as to whether they were bringing along enough forces to fight their way out if the Pakistanis arrived on the scene and attempted to interfere with the operation.

That resulted in the decision to send two more helicopters carrying additional troops. These followed the two lead Black Hawk helicopters that carried the actual assault team. Although there was no confrontation with the Pakistanis, one of those backup helicopters was ultimately brought in to the scene of the raid when a Black Hawk was damaged while making a hard landing.

“Some people may have assumed we could talk our way out a jam, but given our difficult relationship with Pakistan right now, the president did not want to leave anything to chance,’’ said one senior administration official, who like others would not be quoted by name in describing details of the secret mission. “He wanted extra forces if they were necessary.’’

With tensions between the United States and Pakistan escalating since the raid, US officials yesterday sought to tamp down the divisions and pointed to some encouraging developments.

A US official said that US investigators will soon be allowed to interview bin Laden’s three widows now being held by Pakistani authorities, a demand that Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, made on television talk shows Sunday.

US officials say the widows, as well as a review of the trove of documents and other data the SEALs team collected from the raid, could reveal important details, not only about bin Laden’s life and activities since fleeing into Pakistan from Afghanistan in 2001, but also information about Al Qaeda plots, personnel, and planning.

“We believe that it is very important to maintain the cooperative relationship with Pakistan precisely because it’s in our national security interest to do so,’’ said the White House spokesman, Jay Carney.

In an effort to help mend the latest rupture in relations, the CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, will meet soon with his counterpart, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, head of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI, “to discuss the way forward in the common fight against Al Qaeda,’’ a US official said.

Suicide Bomber Attacks Funeral in Northwest Pakistan

Pakistani officials say a suicide bomber blew himself up in the country's northwest, killing at least 34 people and wounding at least 60 others.

Officials say the attack Wednesday targeted a group of about 200 mourners attending a funeral near the city of Peshawar. The funeral was for the wife of an anti-Taliban tribal militiaman from an area known for bloody clashes between Taliban and pro-government fighters.

The bombing comes a day after a car bombing killed at least 24 people near the offices of Pakistan's main intelligence agency in the eastern city of Faisalabad.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for Tuesday's blast, which also wounded more than 125 people.

A Taliban spokesman said the group was targeting the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, in retaliation for the killing of a Taliban commander in the city.

The car bomb ignited gas cylinders at a nearby service station, triggering an even bigger blast that damaged several buildings -- including an office of Pakistan's state airline.

Piles of bricks from the destroyed service station and scraps of metal from damaged cars littered the scene as rescue workers pulled victims from the rubble.

Faisalabad is home to Pakistan's textile industry.