29 May,2011 08:44 AM IST | | Agencies
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has not given a clean chit to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) over its alleged complicity in Osama bin Laden's sheltering in Abbottabad. Her spokesperson Mark C Toner told reporters in Washington, "I don't think she gave them a free chit. We acknowledge that there are difficulties in the relationship, but the bottomline is that this is a relationship that's in our interest and in Pakistan's interest, so we need to work through these challenges moving forward."
Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, who had evaded capture for a decade, was killed on May 2 in a top-secret operation involving a small team of US Special Forces in the Pakistan city of Abbottabad. Following the raid, some US lawmakers had said that it defied logic that bin Laden was able to hide in plain sight without some level of official Pakistani knowledge. During a press briefing Clinton had said, "There is absolutely no evidence that anyone at the highest levels of the Pakistani Government knew that Osama bin Laden was living just miles from where we are today."
