Washington/Abbottabad (Pakistan) – Pakistan President  Ali Zardari on Tuesday  said  his security forces were left out of a U.S. operation to kill Osama bin Laden.

Zardari said this  in an opinion piece in the Washington Post without offering further defence against accusations that his security services should have known where bin Laden was hiding.

“He was not anywhere we had anticipated he would be, but now he is gone,” he said and did little to dispel questions over how the al Qaeda leader could live in comfort near Islamabad.

“Although the events of Sunday were not a joint operation, a decade of cooperation and partnership between the United States and Pakistan led up to the elimination of Osama bin Laden as a continuing threat to the civilized world,’’ he added.

It was the first public comment by any Pakistani civilian or military leader on the raid by a secret U.S. assault team on bin Laden’s compound on Sunday night.

Pakistan had said it did not know bin Laden’s whereabouts, vowing that if Washington had actionable intelligence, its military and security agencies would act.(Reuters/NAN)