Pakistani PM Yusuf Raza Gilani is making a statement in parliament about the US special forces raid which led to the death of Osama Bin Laden last week.
He has launched a defence of Pakistan’s record in fighting terrorism, highlighting the “price paid” in civilian and military losses.
And he strongly denied that there had been any collusion between Pakistan and al-Qaeda to shelter Bin Laden.
“Allegations of complicity and incompetence are absurd,” he told MPs.
He said the US raid was “a violation of sovereignty”, and suggested that the US had helped create al-Qaeda during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and had then widely dispersed its fighters by followed a “flawed” military strategy in that country in 2001.
“We did not invite al-Qaeda to Pakistan,” he insisted, adding that the failure to find Bin Laden for 10m years was the result of “an intelligence failure… of all the intelligence agencies of the world”.
The address comes amid questions about how the al-Qaeda leader was able to live apparently undetected in the town of Abbottabad near the capital.
On Sunday, US President Barack Obama called on Pakistan to investigate the network that sustained Bin Laden. Mr Obama said it had to find out if any officials knew of his whereabouts.
There have been suspicions that someone in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency, which has a long history of contacts with militant groups, may have known where Bin Laden was hiding.
But Mr Gilani told MPs that the ISI had the full support and confidence of the government.
He added that the US remained a key ally of Pakistan.
Access to widows
In an interview broadcast on Sunday, President Obama told CBS’s 60 Minutes show that the al-Qaeda leader must have had “some sort of support network” in Pakistan, but he did not know whether it included government officials.
Analysis
Pakistanis want to hear some sense of accountability among the leadership but also quite a tough stance against unilateral action by the US here in Pakistan.
Pakistanis in general feel pretty brow-beaten after the past week. They feel embarrassed and humiliated. Given the statements their politicians and military leaders have given over the last 10 years or so, saying Osama Bin Laden wasn’t here, or that he was dead, there is a feeling that either their leadership is grossly incompetent or deceptive in the extreme.
They want to hear from them, but as yet, we haven’t had an address by the president. Nobody here really feels that they are going to get accountability.
“We don’t know whether there might have been some people inside of [Pakistan’s] government, people outside of government, and that’s something that we have to investigate and, more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate,” the US president said in the interview, which was conducted on Wednesday.
The BBC’s Natalia Antelava, in Washington, says Mr Obama’s message was even-handed and diplomatic, and he was careful not to accuse Pakistan of harbouring Bin Laden.
Pakistan plays a crucial role in America’s war efforts in Afghanistan, and too much public pressure on Pakistan could jeopardise the relationship, she adds.
US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon meanwhile told NBC talk show Meet the Press that Islamabad needed to establish how Bin Laden lived for six years a short drive from the capital and beside a military academy.
He said the Pakistani authorities needed to provide the US with access to Bin Laden’s three widows, who were taken into custody after last week’s US commando raid.
But a Pakistani intelligence official, quoted by the Washington Post, said that his government needed permission from the wives’ home countries before Pakistan could allow US officials to question them.
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Many in Abbottabad say they do not believe the videos are real
American officials have meanwhile been poring over computer files seized by US special forces from the hideout.
“It’s [the intelligence cache] about the size, the CIA tells us, of a small college library,” said Mr Donilon.
On Saturday, the Pentagon released from the material five home videos featuring Bin Laden, with the audio removed.
They included a message by the al-Qaeda leader to the US and footage of Bin Laden watching an item about himself on TV.
US officials said the Abbottabad compound was a command and control centre from where Bin Laden had actively led al-Qaeda.
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Pakistan assesses Bin Laden raid