Pakistan PM: No More Business as Usual With the United States

Govt Rules Out Reconsidering Ouster of US From Shamsi Drone Base

In what is usually the punctuation at the end of such an incident, the White House today issued its statement on the Friday night US attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, insisting that killing them was a “tragedy.”

But as much as they’d like to make this just another in a long line of forgotten incidents, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani said today that the government is going to react harshly to the attack, and that it marked the end of “business as usual” with the United States.

Saying that the government had “no option” but to respect the will on the public, at a time when massive anti-US protests are breaking out in several major cities, Gilani warned that the government was “re-evaluating” its relationship with the US.

The near term impact is the closure of the border to NATO supply trucks, as well as a demand that the US leave the Shamsi Air Base. In the long-run the split could have many more ramifications, particularly with the massive US-led occupation of Afghanistan still going so poorly.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.