Pakistan plans air defense against Nato attacks

Pakistan may deploy air defense weapons to the Afghan border to prevent future Nato airstrikes such as the ones last month that the Pakistani military claims were pre-planned and that killed 24 of the country's soldiers, a senior lawmaker said Friday.

The Nato airstrikes against two army posts on the Afghan border before dawn on Nov. 26 added to anger that Pakistan still felt over the covert US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town in May. Pakistani officials were outraged they were not told beforehand about the operation against the al-Qaida chief, which also originated in Afghanistan, and fumed over the violation of the country's sovereignty — as they have done with the Nato attacks.

Maj. Gen. Ashfaq Nadeem, Pakistan's head of military operations, told the Cabinet and the Senate's defense committee Thursday that officials believe the airstrikes were planned and speculated they may have been carried out by the CIA, according to the head of the defense committee, Javed Ashraf Qazi, who attended the briefing.

The CIA is widely despised in Pakistan because of frequent drone strikes targeting militants in Pakistan's tribal region.

Nadeem said the military was considering deploying air defense weapons to the Afghan border to prevent future attacks, according to Qazi.

"You cannot deploy these systems on each and every outpost. Sometimes these posts are attacked by militants, and you may lose these weapons," said Qazi, a retired army general and former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Despite these risks, the defense committee was convinced the military should deploy air defense weapons to the border, said Qazi.

Pakistan army chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani has instructed troops on the ground that they are allowed to strike back against any future incursions without prior approval of top commanders, Qazi quoted Nadeem as saying.

Nato attacks have killed Pakistani troops at least three different times along the border since 2008, but the Nov. 26 incident in the Mohmand tribal area was by far the most deadly.

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