According to US and Pakistani Officials said that the CIA suspended its long-standing use of the air base as a launch site for armed drones three months ago, according to US and Pakistani officials.
American personnel and Predator drones, meanwhile, remain at the facility in Balochistan, with security provided by the Pakistani military, the report revealed.
All drone strikes in the past three months have been lunched from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, Officials said.
Pakistan defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar said that Islamabad had been pressing US to leave the base even before the May 2 incursion in Abbottabad.
After the raid, Mukhtar told reporters on Wednesday, “We told them again.”
The Washington Post, quoting a senior Pakistani defence official, reported that in the weeks after Pakistan’s release of the CIA contractor Raymond Davis, 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.
In response, the US official said that “there has been some thinning out at the base, and the drone missions suspended.” An American official said the CIA’s decision to suspend the launches was part of a US effort to “pay attention to the sensitivities” of the Pakistanis.
Firdous Ashiq Aawan te Information Minister said on Friday, however, dismissed Mukhtar’s statement that the US had been asked to vacate the airbase in Balochistan.
“It’s just a statement for the media,” Awan told a media gathering in Lahore. “I am also a member of the defence committee and the matter was not discussed there.”
Meanwhile, American officials had also rebuffed Mukhtar’s statements saying there was no plan to evacuate the base.
“That base is neither vacated nor being vacated,” a US official familiar with the matter was reported as saying.
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