Pakistan rejects Aghfan plea to attend Bonn conference

US-Pakistan relations are hanging by a thread after the NATO air strike Pakistani Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar on Wednesday said Pakistan would not compromise on its security and sovereignty and regain control of Shamsi Airbase , according to the deadline. “We will take over the Shamsi base on December 11 in any case and no drone will be allowed to fly from here after the deadline,” he said in a statement to journalists.
The minister said Pakistan did not want conflict with US but could not tolerate attacks on its sovereignity.
He said that Pakistan would review other agreements with the US in different sectors and all decisions would be taken in the "supreme interest of the country".
The United Arab Emirates on Wednesday demanded that NATO apologise to Pakistan for the deaths of  24 soldiers in an airstrike at its post along the Pak-Afghan border. UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, who recently returned from an unscheduled visit to Pakistan to meet its leadership, said his country was following up closely on the happenings in Pakistan as it has deep historic ties.
“This is a mistake that we cannot accept. Anyone who loves Pakistan cannot justify it,” he said.
He also asked for an investigation into the incident and asked that assurances must be given that the event would not be repeated.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said Wednesday he rejected a personal plea from the Afghan president to reconsider Islamabad's decision to boycott an upcoming international conference on Afghanistan over NATO airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani troops.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai telephoned Gilani on Tuesday to urge him to reconsider a boycott of the Bonn conference over a deadly Nato strike, officials in both countries said.
"Afghan land has been used against Pakistan, and we are protesting against this," Gilani told reporters in the southern city of Karachi. "We don't want the land of our brother country, which is like a twin, to be used against Pakistan."
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States and Pakistan must learn lessons from a NATO air assault that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers so the countries can continue fighting terrorism together, as a senior Pakistani army official said the attack was a deliberate, blatant act of aggression.
Clinton said Wednesday at a global aid development forum in South Korea that the assault in northwestern Pakistan “was tragic.” She pledged a quick and thorough investigation, The Associated Press reported.
Clinton also expressed regret over Pakistan’s withdrawal from a US-backed meeting on Afghanistan taking place next week in Bonn, Germany.
“Nothing will be gained by turning our backs on mutually beneficial cooperation. Frankly it is regrettable that Pakistan has decided not to attend the conference in Bonn,” Clinton said.
Pakistan pulled out of the conference on the future of Afghanistan on Tuesday in reaction to the cross-border attack by NATO that plunged US-Pakistani relations deeper into crisis.
The United States is hoping Pakistan will not play spoiler in the US-backed plan to shore up Afghanistan’s security and bring international forces home.
A senior Pakistani army official has said the NATO cross-border air attack that killed 24 soldiers was a deliberate, blatant act of aggression, hardening Pakistan’s stance on an incident which could hurt efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.
In a briefing to editors carried in local newspapers on Wednesday, Major-General Ishfaq Nadeem, director general of military operations, also said NATO forces were alerted they were attacking Pakistani posts, but helicopters kept firing.
“Detailed information of the posts was already with ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), including map references, and it was impossible that they did not know these to be our posts,” The News quoted Nadeem as saying in the briefing held at army headquarters on Tuesday.
NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military border posts in northwest Pakistan on Saturday in the worst incident of its kind since Islamabad allied itself with Washington in 2001 in the war on militancy.
The helicopters appeared near the post around 15 to 20 minutes past midnight, opened fire, then left about 45 minutes later, Nadeem was quoted as saying. They reappeared at 0115 local time and attacked again for another hour, he said.
Nadeem said that minutes before the first attack, a US sergeant on duty at a communications centre in Afghanistan told a Pakistani major that NATO special forces were receiving indirect fire from a location 15 km (9 miles) from the posts.
The Pakistanis said they needed time to check and asked for coordinates. Seven minutes later, the sergeant called back and said “your Volcano post has been hit,” Nadeem quoted the sergeant as saying.
Nadeem concluded that the communication confirmed NATO knew the locations of the Pakistani posts before attacking, said The News.
The NATO attack shifted attention away from Pakistan’s widely questioned performance against militants who cross its border to attack US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan, and has given the military a chance to reassert itself.
Islamabad's decision to boycott next week’s meeting in Bonn, Germany, will deprive the talks of a key player that could nudge Taliban militants into a peace process as NATO combat troops prepare to leave Afghanistan in 2014, according to Reuters.
The army, which has ruled the country for more than half of its history and sets security and foreign policy, faced strong criticism from both the Pakistani public and its ally, the United States, after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Al-Qaeda leader had apparently been living in a Pakistani garrison town for years before US special forces found and killed him in a unilateral raid.
Pakistanis criticised the military for failing to protect their sovereignty, and angry US officials wondered whether some members of military intelligence had sheltered him.
Pakistan’s government and military said they had no idea Bin Laden was in the country.
The army seems to have regained its confidence, and anti-NATO protests suggest it has won the support of the public in a country where anti-American sentiment runs high even on rare occasions when relations with Washington are healthy.
Exactly what happened at the Pakistani posts along an unruly and poorly defined border is still unclear. NATO has promised to investigate.
A Western official and an Afghan security official who requested anonymity said NATO troops were responding to fire from across the border. Pakistan said earlier the attack was unprovoked.
Both the Western and Pakistani explanations are possibly correct: that a retaliatory attack by NATO troops took a tragic, mistaken turn in harsh terrain where differentiating friend from foe can be difficult.
Nadeem was adamant that all communications channels had informed NATO that it was attacking Pakistani positions.
“They continued regardless, with impunity,” The News quoted him as saying.
A US-led investigation into the NATO air strike is to report its initial findings by December 23, officials said on Tuesday.
The chief of US Central Command, which oversees US forces in Afghanistan and the Middle East, appointed Brigadier General Stephen Clark, a one-star air force general, to lead the investigation, the US military announced.