Pakistan Demands No Airstrike Repeat

Pakistan's president told a senior U.S. diplomat on Saturday that the two countries must work together to avoid a repeat of U.S. attacks like last week's strike on a Pakistani border village that killed civilians.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf made the remarks to visiting U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns at a meeting in Islamabad, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said.

"While reaffirming Pakistan's commitment to counterterrorism, the foreign minister underlined the need for the two countries to work in a manner that precludes recent incidents like Bajur," the ministry said in a statement.

"He highlighted the prevailing public sentiment and stressed that such incidents were counterproductive," it said.

The airstrike hit a building where Pakistani authorities suspect al Qaeda operatives were gathered to plan attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thirteen villagers were killed. Officials believe at least four foreign militants also may have died, including an al Qaeda explosives and chemical weapons expert, Midhat Mursi and a son-in-law of al-Zawahiri. The attack, however, missed Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's No. 2 leader.

Earlier in the day, Musharraf told Burns "what happened in Bajur must not be repeated," a Foreign Ministry official said on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk publicly to the media.

The comments were Musharraf's first publicized reaction to the attack.

But Musharraf also pledged to continue helping the United States in its war on terror, the official said. Pakistan is one of the top U.S. allies in the effort, although the recent attack has fueled resentment in a country where many oppose the ties.

A Foreign Ministry statement issued after Musharraf's meeting did not mention the leader's comments on the airstrike. Instead it said Musharraf expressed gratitude for Washington's assistance in relief efforts for an Oct. 8 earthquake that devastated the country's north.

Pakistani intelligence officials, meanwhile, said al Qaeda's second-in-command met his deputy last year at the house hit in the attack, in which at least four of the terror network's operatives are believed to have been killed.

Al-Zawahiri met his deputy, Abu Farraj al-Libbi, in Damadola early last year, a security official said on condition of anonymity. He added that Libyan-born al-Libbi told Pakistani interrogators of the meeting after his capture in Pakistan in May 2005.

Al-Libbi, once al Qaeda's No. 3 leader, is accused of masterminding two attempts to assassinate Musharraf. After his arrest, he was turned over to Washington for further investigation.

The two are believed to have met at the house of Bakhtpur Khan, which was destroyed in the pre-dawn airstrike. Khan is also listed among the 13 who are believed to have died.

U.S. and Pakistani intelligence, helped by tribesmen and Afghans, began monitoring Khan's home after the al-Libbi confession, the officials said.

Pakistani authorities suspect al Qaeda operatives had gathered last week in Damadola to eat dinner and plan attacks to be carried out early this year in Afghanistan and Pakistan, another intelligence official said.

Pakistani and U.S. officials have reportedly said that the Egyptian-born al-Zawahiri escaped death by skipping the meeting.

An Islamic Web site released a tape from al-Zawahiri on Friday, but U.S. officials said the tape could have been made much earlier. Al-Zawahiri did not discuss the Damadola attacks in his comments, but used a poem to praise the "martyrs of holy war" in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

The CIA verified the voice on the audiotape as al-Zawahiri following a technical analysis, an agency official said.

The 17-minute tape was posted on an Islamic militant Web forum a day after al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden released his first audiotape in more than a year, threatening new attacks in the United States and offering Americans a conditional truce.

The tape made no statement, and instead the voice on it was heard reading a long poem honoring "martyrs of jihad," or holy war.

He dedicated the poem to "all Muslim brothers everywhere, to the mujahedeen (holy warrior) brothers in Islam's fortified borderlines against the Zionist-Crusader campaign in Palestine and Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya."