Pakistan-U.S. Relations on Rocky Terrain
Missiles kill 6, despite U.S. vow to respect Pakistan's "territorial integrity."
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 17, 2008 — -- His words were probably accurate for about five hours.
This afternoon President Bush's top military adviser, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, left Pakistan promising to "respect its territorial integrity." While his plane was still in the air, two missiles rained down on the tribal agency of South Waziristan, destroying a compound that housed at least one foreign militant.
A resident of the village where the missiles struck told ABC News at least six people had died in the attack.
"These guided missiles hit the house," he said. "It was the same American missile with the same sound that they have been using."
A Pentagon official denied that the U.S. military was behind today's incident.
But it follows a recent pattern of at least six attacks on Pakistani soil by American soldiers or drones in just the last two weeks, a major increase at a time when U.S. troops in Afghanistan are facing an increasingly strong and sophisticated insurgency that is partially based in Pakistan.
Those attacks included the first known ground assault by special forces soldiers on the Pakistani side of the border. The raid on the South Waziristan village of Angor Adda, which took place Sept. 3, enraged officials here and led them to warn publicly that any subsequent ground attack would be met with Pakistani firepower.
"The policy is very simple and clear," Pakistani military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas told ABC News. "We deserve the right to retaliate to defend of our territory."
Politicians backed up the military's threat.
"Pakistan will take all measures necessary to jealously guard its sovereignty. Anything that needs to be done in Pakistan, on Pakistani territory, will be done by Pakistani forces. Let me assure you of that," the governor of the country's Northwest Frontier province, Owais Ahmed Ghani, told ABC News.
Mullen added his 16-hour visit to Pakistan while he was already on a trip through Europe and Asia, in part because he wanted to try to smooth things over with the Pakistani leadership in response to similar statements.
