Islamabad, July 31 (ANI): Pakistan has asked the United States to stop the Central Investigation Agency-run unmanned air strikes in tribal areas, diplomatic sources has said.
The official request for stopping the strikes, which had started in 2004, was conveyed earlier this month when ISI chief Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha visited Washington, The Dawn reports.
According to diplomatic sources, Pasha told acting CIA Director Michael J. Morell that the raids had become a major source of embarrassment for the Pakistani government, as it was blamed for failing to stop a foreign power from killing its own citizens.
Pakistan had publicly protested the strikes earlier, but this is the first time that it has officially approached the US to stop them.
The Pakistanis believe that since June 18, 2004, when the CIA began the drone strikes, the unmanned aircraft had killed over 2,500 people, mostly civilians. The US spy agency has conducted almost 250 strikes since 2004.
The strikes have increased from less than 50 in the Bush administration to over 200 since President Barack Obama took charge.
The US government, however, rejects such claims as incorrect, insisting that drones are extraordinarily accurate.
"There hasn't been a single collateral death" since last year, President Obama's chief counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan said. (ANI)
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