PAKISTAN'S tenuous security situation continued to unravel yesterday with the daylight assassination of a Saudi Arabian diplomat in Karachi as US senator John Kerry flew into the capital for talks aimed at salvaging the failing alliance.
The junior Saudi consulate official was shot dead after two gunmen on motorbikes opened fire on his vehicle in the upmarket Karachi suburb of Defence, five days after militants lobbed two grenades at the Saudi consulate in the port city.
Pakistani authorities said they were investigating links between the Saudi attacks and the May 2 raid by US Navy SEALs on a residential compound in Abbottabad, in which Osama bin Laden and four aides were killed.
The country is in the grip of its most grave crisis in years, with Pakistani Taliban on a deadly rampage of reprisals, the military at its lowest ebb in decades and its US alliance on a knife edge.
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has staged at least two terror strikes since the bin Laden operation, including a double suicide bombing on a paramilitary cadet training centre last Friday in the northwest that killed 80 people and wounded more than 100.
It has not yet claimed responsibility for either Saudi attack, although a Taliban spokesman yesterday said the group "fully supported" them.
In a scheduled meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani yesterday, Senator Kerry was expected to question the military establishment's failure to detect that the al-Qa'ida chief was living a short walk from the nation's most prestigious military academy.
He had earlier met army chief Ashfaq Parvaz Kayani, who reportedly spoke of "intense feelings" among rank and file soldiers over the US breach of Pakistani sovereignty.
During a closed-door parliamentary briefing at the weekend, ISI intelligence chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha offered his resignation for the intelligence failure.
Elements of US congress are pushing to end financial aid to the nuclear-armed nation amid suspicions some within Pakistan's security forces helped harbour the world's most wanted terrorist. Afghanistan's former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh yesterday reinforced those suspicions, telling CBS's 60 Minutes he knew four years ago that bin Laden was hiding in Mansehra - 20km from Abbottabad - but that Pakistan leaders had rejected his claims.
Ahead of his arrival in Islamabad, late on Sunday local time, Senator Kerry conceded the alliance was in trouble but added: "I think the important thing here is not to get into a recriminatory, finger-pointing, accusatory back-and-forth. We need to find a way to march forward if possible.
"If it is not . . . there are a set of downside consequences that can be profound."
He said there was strong evidence to suggest the Pakistani state was helping send insurgents over the border to fight coalition troops in Afghanistan - part of Islamabad's insurance policy to maintain influence there and prevent encirclement by India's allies.
"Yes, there are insurgents coming across the border; yes, they are operating out of North Waziristan and other areas of sanctuary; and yes, there is some evidence of Pakistan government knowledge of some of these activities in ways that are very disturbing," he said.
"That will be . . . one of the subjects of conversation."
The US is likely to seek Pakistan's co-operation in a probe into Florida-based Pakistani cleric Hafiz Khan, arrested in the US at the weekend along with two sons on charges of financing the Pakistani Taliban.
The junior Saudi consulate official was shot dead after two gunmen on motorbikes opened fire on his vehicle in the upmarket Karachi suburb of Defence, five days after militants lobbed two grenades at the Saudi consulate in the port city.
Pakistani authorities said they were investigating links between the Saudi attacks and the May 2 raid by US Navy SEALs on a residential compound in Abbottabad, in which Osama bin Laden and four aides were killed.
The country is in the grip of its most grave crisis in years, with Pakistani Taliban on a deadly rampage of reprisals, the military at its lowest ebb in decades and its US alliance on a knife edge.
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has staged at least two terror strikes since the bin Laden operation, including a double suicide bombing on a paramilitary cadet training centre last Friday in the northwest that killed 80 people and wounded more than 100.
It has not yet claimed responsibility for either Saudi attack, although a Taliban spokesman yesterday said the group "fully supported" them.
In a scheduled meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani yesterday, Senator Kerry was expected to question the military establishment's failure to detect that the al-Qa'ida chief was living a short walk from the nation's most prestigious military academy.
He had earlier met army chief Ashfaq Parvaz Kayani, who reportedly spoke of "intense feelings" among rank and file soldiers over the US breach of Pakistani sovereignty.
During a closed-door parliamentary briefing at the weekend, ISI intelligence chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha offered his resignation for the intelligence failure.
Elements of US congress are pushing to end financial aid to the nuclear-armed nation amid suspicions some within Pakistan's security forces helped harbour the world's most wanted terrorist. Afghanistan's former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh yesterday reinforced those suspicions, telling CBS's 60 Minutes he knew four years ago that bin Laden was hiding in Mansehra - 20km from Abbottabad - but that Pakistan leaders had rejected his claims.
Ahead of his arrival in Islamabad, late on Sunday local time, Senator Kerry conceded the alliance was in trouble but added: "I think the important thing here is not to get into a recriminatory, finger-pointing, accusatory back-and-forth. We need to find a way to march forward if possible.
"If it is not . . . there are a set of downside consequences that can be profound."
He said there was strong evidence to suggest the Pakistani state was helping send insurgents over the border to fight coalition troops in Afghanistan - part of Islamabad's insurance policy to maintain influence there and prevent encirclement by India's allies.
"Yes, there are insurgents coming across the border; yes, they are operating out of North Waziristan and other areas of sanctuary; and yes, there is some evidence of Pakistan government knowledge of some of these activities in ways that are very disturbing," he said.
"That will be . . . one of the subjects of conversation."
The US is likely to seek Pakistan's co-operation in a probe into Florida-based Pakistani cleric Hafiz Khan, arrested in the US at the weekend along with two sons on charges of financing the Pakistani Taliban.
