Source : Fars News Agency
TEHRAN (FNA)- Pakistan's ambassador to the United States blasted the Obama administration for continued drone strikes in Fata, calling the violation a "red line" that should not be crossed.
At a breakfast meeting with the Christian Science Monitor staff, Sherry Rehman said that drones strikes were "a clear violation of our sovereignty and a violation of international law" that threatened stable relations between the two governments, Dawn reported.
She rejected persistent media reports that Pakistan tacitly approved the strikes while denouncing them publicly as untrue. "Let me assure you that since we have been in government, there has been no quiet complicity, no question of wink and nod," she said.
The United States has launched hundreds of drone strikes in Fata, killing dozens of militant leaders. Pakistan says that the drones also have killed a large number of innocent civilians.
Pakistan warns that the civilian deaths are counter-productive as they increase public sympathy for the militants and wants the United States to stop the strikes.
The drone strategy "creates more potential terrorists on the ground and militants on the ground instead of taking them out," the ambassador said. "We need to drain the swamp, but instead it is radicalising people."
Ambassador Rehman complained that the United States had failed to appreciate Pakistan's domestic terrorism problems and counter-terrorism operations, which have cost nearly 50,000 military and civilian lives and billions of dollars in expenditures and lost income over the past decade.
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