ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said yesterday that Pakistan squandered opportunities over the years to kill or capture leaders of the al Qaeda terrorist network responsible for 9/11.
While US officials have said they believe Osama bin Laden and senior lieutenants have been hiding in Pakistan, Clinton’s unusually blunt comments went further, as she suggested that the government has done too little to fight them.
“I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,” Clinton said in an interview with Pakistani journalists in Lahore.
“Maybe that’s the case. Maybe they’re not gettable. I don’t know.”
A Pakistani journalist had asked Clinton why the fight against terrorism seemed to put Pakistan at the center and why other nations couldn’t do more.
Clinton noted that al Qaeda has launched attacks on Indonesia, the Philippines and many other countries.
“So the world has an interest in seeing the capture and killing of the people who are the masterminds of this terrorist syndicate,” she said. “As far as we know, they are in Pakistan.”