Washington, July 2(ANI): The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) suspended its long-standing use of an air base in Pakistan to stage drone attacks against militants three months ago, according to American and Pakistani officials.
In recent days, Pakistan has publicly declared that it "ended" all US flights from the base in the wake of the secret May 2 US raid that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
But US and Pakistani officials said that the aircraft launches were halted in April, weeks before the bin Laden raid, after a dispute over the detention of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who had shot dead two Pakistani persons in Lahore in January, The Washington Post reports.
An American official said that the CIA's decision to suspend the launches was part of a US effort to "pay attention to the sensitivities" of the Pakistanis, who had objected to a claim of diplomatic immunity for Davis, according to the report.
In the weeks immediately after Pakistan's grudging release of the double murder-accused CIA contractor in March, top Pakistani military and intelligence officials made "a formal, personal request... a demand... more than once" to their US counterparts to end the flights and leave Pakistan, a senior Pakistani defense official said.
In response, "there has been some thinning out at the base, and the drone missions suspended," the official added.
However, US personnel and Predator drones remain at the facility in the south-western province of Balochistan, with security provided by the Pakistani military, officials from both countries said.
All US drone strikes in the past three months have been launched from Afghanistan, in the vicinity of Jalalabad, according to the officials, who spoke about intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity.
The New America Foundation, which tracks the strikes, has listed 23 such raids since the beginning of April, all but one in Pakistan's tribal regions of North and South Waziristan, the report said, noting that a June 20 attack was reported in Kurram, an area above North Waziristan along the Afghanistan border. (ANI)
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