US denies NATO attack on Pakistani troops deliberate

The top US military officer denied allegations by a senior army official in Islamabad that a NATO attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers was a deliberate act of aggression.

Islamabad has reacted angrily to the attack last weekend, which threatens to set back peace efforts in Afghanistan, by pulling out of an international conference in Germany next week on Afghanistan's future. It stood by its decision on Wednesday despite German hopes to the contrary.

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.

In comments carried in local newspapers on Wednesday that characterized the attack as blatant aggression, Major General Ishfaq Nadeem, Pakistan's director general of military operations, 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 at an editors' briefing at army headquarters on Tuesday.

But General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in an interview, "The one thing I will say publicly and categorically is that this was not a deliberate attack."

Speaking as he flew back to Washington after a trip to London, Dempsey said he was trying to discuss the incident with Pakistan behind closed doors.

"Candidly we don't want to try to resolve this issue through the media. No offense," he said.

Dempsey declined to discuss details of the US military's review into the incident, but asked, "What in the world would we gain by attacking a Pakistan border post?"

Nadeem said the NATO helicopters appeared near the post around 15 to 20 minutes past midnight, opened fire, then left about 45 minutes later. They reappeared at 1:15 a.m. local time and attacked again for another hour, he said.

Dempsey said the military was pouring over its own data from the incident.

"We're in the process of reviewing radio traffic, gun tapes, all of the things that an investigation has to consider before I can really make any statement about the duration," Dempsey said.

"But I can say, categorically, it was not a deliberate attack."