US justification for drone attack violates int’l law: Pakistan
The justification provided by the United States for its recent drone strike, which reportedly targeted Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour, runs contrary to the international regulation, Pakistan says.
"For the US government to say that whoever is a threat to them will be targeted wherever they are, that is against international law," Pakistan Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told reporters in Islamabad on Tuesday.
The remarks came a few days after the US Department of Defense announced in a statement that it had mounted the strike against Mansour in a remote area of southwest Pakistan, near the Afghan border.
US Secretary of State John Kerry defended the attack, arguing that Mansour “posed a continuing imminent threat” to US personnel and Afghans.
The Pentagon also said that the US forces targeted the Taliban leader in an air raid because he was engaged in plotting that posed "specific, imminent threats" to US and US-led coalition troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, however, said the drone attack violated its sovereignty because it was carried out on the Pakistani soil.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Khan said he could not confirm Mansour’s death, saying the body recovered from the site of the strike was charred beyond recognition.
DNA samples would be tested against a relative who came forward to claim the body, he added.
"The government of Pakistan cannot announce this without a scientific and legal basis," Khan said.
The Taliban has yet to formally announce Mansour’s death. However, Washington and Kabul have confirmed it, with senior Taliban members saying their leadership council has been meeting to discuss the succession.
The reports about the alleged killing of Mansour, who assumed leadership only last year, come as splinter groups within the Taliban had refused to pledge allegiance to him.
The Taliban has seen a string of defections ever since the news about the death of its founder and long-time leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, broke in late July 2015. Mullah Omar died at a hospital in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi in April 2013.
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