Pakistan won't cooperate in bombing investigation

WASHINGTON - The Defense Department says Pakistan is refusing to participate in the U.S. investigation of last week's NATO bombing along the Afghanistan border that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

DOD spokesman George Little says the U.S. has asked Pakistan to be part of the investigation, but that the Pakistanis have "elected to date" to not participate.

Little refers to the bombing as a "bump in the road" for U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism co-operation, although most observers and analysts have been far less sanguine -- describing a relationship at an all-time low.

Earlier Friday, Pakistani military officials U.S. officials gave Pakistan soldiers the wrong location when asking for clearance to attack militants along the border last weekend, leading to the soldiers' deaths and the crisis in relations between Washington and Islamabad.

Pakistan: No "prior information" of air strikes

The claim was the latest in a series by mostly anonymous officials in both countries trying to explain what happened before and during last week's bombing of two Pakistani border checkpoints by U.S. aircraft.

NATO and America have expressed regret for the loss of lives, but have rejected Pakistani allegations it was a deliberate act of aggression.

The incident has pushed already strained ties between Washington and Islamabad close to rupture, complicating American hopes of securing Pakistan's help in negotiating an end to the Afghan war. In retaliation for the raid, Islamabad has already closed its western border to NATO supplies traveling into landlocked Afghanistan.

Thousands of Islamic extremists and other demonstrators took to the streets across the country after Friday prayers to protest the Nov. 26 strike. Some called on the army to attack the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. The chants were a worrying sign for the West because it indicates that anger over the incident is uniting hard-liners and the military.

Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has ordered military commanders on the Afghan border to respond to any repeated attack by NATO, said Information Minister Firdous Awan. She said Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told a national security council meeting Friday that: "It is a unanimous decision after consultation at the leadership level."

U.S. officials have told The Associated Press that Saturday's incident occurred when a joint U.S. and Afghan patrol requested backup after being hit by mortar and small arms fire by Taliban militants.

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Before responding, the patrol first checked with the Pakistani army, which reported it had no troops in the area, they said.

U.S. officials say Pakistani troops had "given the go-ahead" for the strikes, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. This account would suggest that the Pakistanis were at least partly to blame for the deadly error.

A Pakistani military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information confirmed that the Americans had provided his side with a location for the planned strike.

However, he said, the information arrived late, Pakistan never cleared the strike, and the coordinates provided were incorrect anyway.

"Wrong information about (the) area of operation was provided to Pakistani officials a few minutes before the strike," he said. "Without getting clearance from Pakistan side, the post had already been engaged by U.S. helicopters and fighter jets."

Pakistan initially denied that it had given the U.S. any go-ahead at all.

"Pakistan did not have any prior information about any operation in the area," Pakistan's army said in a statement to CBS News. "In fact, wrong information about area of operation was provided to Pakistani officials few minutes before the strike."

The remote outposts, which sit perched atop a mountain overlooking the border with Afghanistan, "were clearly marked on maps. These locations were shared with ISAF and our own troops were well aware of their presence," a Pakistani Foreign Ministry official told CBS News' Farhan Bokhari on Friday, separate from the army's reaction.

"There is no question of a mistake in failing to know of their presence," the Foreign Ministry official told CBS News. "These were sizeable posts which were in regular contact with command centers."

U.S. officials at the border coordination center, where the two sides liaise over operations close to the frontier, had later "apologized privately to Pakistani officials for initially providing wrong information and the subsequent engagement of the post without prior information," he said.

The U.S. and NATO have both launched investigations. Washington has not formally apologized, saying it would not be appropriate before an investigation into the incident is complete.

Anti-American demonstrations took place around Pakistan on Friday, including a 2,000-strong rally in the country's commercial hub of Karachi by the Sunni extremist Sipah-e-Sahaba group. The group is banned because of its ties to al Qaeda, but that ban is largely ignored.

Aurangezeb Farooqi, a leader of the group, asked the protesters whether they were ready to join the army to fight Americans. Many raised their fists in response and shouted "God is great!" Some held up placards saying: "There is only one treatment for America: jihad, jihad," meaning holy war.

Washington believes that Islamabad's cooperation is vital to negotiate a truce with Afghan insurgent leaders based on Pakistani soil, so that the U.S. can withdraw most of its troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

But Islamabad has its own interests, chiefly in ensuring that whatever regime remains in Kabul after U.S. forces withdraw is friendly to Pakistan, and hostile to India. Consequently, Pakistan appears to be in no rush to take political risks helping the United States.