KABUL, Afghanistan — The political fallout from
a NATO airstrike in Pakistan that was operated out of Afghanistan and killed at least two dozen Pakistani soldiers became clearer on Sunday, as Pakistan seethed over the attack and the United States scrambled to contain the damage to an already frayed relationship.
Afghan officials, meanwhile, worried that they would bear the immediate brunt of Pakistan’s wrath and that the Pakistanis would follow through on threats to withdraw from an international conference on Afghanistan’s security and development that is scheduled for Dec. 5.
Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton called Pakistan’s foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, to discuss the situation, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, talked with Pakistan’s supreme army commander, Gen.
Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. General Kayani spent much of the day leading a funeral service in Peshawar, Pakistan, for soldiers who had been killed and visiting others who were wounded in the attack on Saturday.
In her talk with Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Khar conveyed the “deep sense of rage felt across Pakistan,” according to a government statement. Demonstrations expressing anger at the United States broke out in major cities across the country.
The episode “negates the progress made by the two countries on improving relations and forces Pakistan to revisit the terms of engagement,” Ms. Khar was quoted as saying.
An investigation is under way to determine how the attack occurred, said NATO officials, who declined to discuss it until the inquiry was completed. Diplomats in Afghanistan who were briefed on the preliminary findings said that a joint NATO and Afghan force operating along the border came under sustained fire late Friday or early Saturday — it is not clear from whom — and called in air support.
The coalition forces tried to contact the Pakistani military on the other side of the border. It is unclear whom they reached, but the coalition forces believed they were free to fire back, and the aircraft struck positions in Pakistan, according to diplomats.
The Pakistani government said 24 people had been killed, but accounts near the scene in the Mohmand tribal region said the toll was as high as 28.
The cross-border strike not only resulted in more deaths than previous attacks, but it also occurred at a particularly tense moment in relations between Pakistan and the United States, and between Pakistan and Afghanistan, said diplomats and analysts in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“There have been incidents like this before, incidents where three or four Pakistanis regrettably died, but 25 people or more, that’s on a different scale,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject.
The Pakistani government also faces a delicate domestic political situation. The Pakistani population is strongly anti-American, and the government must take a strong stand when its troops are killed. If it fails to do so, it risks losing popular support and, with it, the ability to fight extremists like the Pakistani Taliban.
In Karachi, thousands of protesters gathered outside the United States Consulate and shouted “Down with America!” Reuters reported.
In Ghotki, in Sindh Province,
the opposition leader Imran Khan, who has opposed the fight against extremists in the federally administered tribal areas, urged the government to pull out of “America’s war.”
Meanwhile, in Kabul, the Afghan government said it was concerned about Pakistan’s threat to shun the conference on Afghanistan’s future in Bonn, Germany. Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, urged Pakistan not to punish Afghanistan for NATO’s actions.
A spokesman for the Afghan Foreign Ministry, Janan Mosazai, described the conference as important “in terms of the vision the Afghan government will be sharing with the international community, with the region, in the 10 years after transition.”
The conference, to which more than 50 countries are sending representatives, was organized to showcase the international commitment to Afghanistan’s security and to reassure Afghans and potential foreign investors about the nation’s future.
If Pakistan, which is widely seen as a seedbed for the Afghan insurgency, refuses to participate, those goals could be undermined, leaving little doubt that the fighting will continue, according to Western diplomats and military officials.
Mr. Mosazai said the Afghan government had been contacted by Pakistan’s ambassador in Kabul, but he did not elaborate. But Pakistani officials said they had strongly protested to their Afghan counterparts about the “use of Afghan territory against Pakistan” and urged the government to prevent similar attacks.
In a recent
consultative assembly, Mr. Karzai promised that Afghan soil would never be used to attack neighboring countries. Although he was speaking about the strategic partnership that he is negotiating with the United States, the issue has resonated in the region, where both Iran and Pakistan fear the American military presence in Afghanistan.
Mr. Faizi, the president’s spokesman, said the government stood by that commitment, and the assembly, with more than 2,000 participants, endorsed it.
“These bases will not be used against any neighboring country,” he said. “That’s the advice of the Afghan people and, of course, the president. We stand by that.”
Alissa J. Rubin reported from Kabul, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan. Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Washington.
