ISLAMABAD: US officials said Osama bin Laden and his aides discussed making a deal with Pakistan in which al Qaeda would refrain from attacking the country in exchange for protection inside Pakistan, according to a report published in the US newspaper the New York Times.
The officials, however, emphasised that they had no evidence that such a proposal was ever raised with Pakistani military or intelligence operatives.
The revelations were made based on documents seized from Bin Laden's compound.
The report said that the fact that Bin Laden even considered a truce with Pakistan suggests that he thought the idea might have had some support inside the country’s national security establishment. However, it added that the discussions between al Qaeda leaders provide evidence that there was no deal in place allowing Bin Laden to hide in the Abbottabad compound, where he was killed by the US seals.
Relations between Pakistan and the US went into freefall over the US Navy SEALs raid on May 2 that killed the al Qaeda chief in the city of Abbottabad. The discovery that the world's most-wanted man was living just a stone's throw from its major military academy raised troubling questions about whether anyone in the Pakistani establishment was protecting him.
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