ISLAMABAD, 17 May 2005 — Pakistan renewed its demand yesterday that the United States conduct a thorough probe and share its findings into reported desecration of the Holy Qur’an, despite a clarification issued by Newsweek that its story may be wrong.
“We have noted the clarification issued by the Newsweek that the story may be based on certain wrong assumptions,” Foreign Office spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani told a weekly press briefing.
“Nevertheless we have condemned the reported incident in the strongest possible terms. We have asked a thorough investigation be conducted by the US administration and we would expect the results of the official investigation shared with us.”
Newsweek magazine reported last week that US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba had defiled copies of the holy book to rattle Muslim prisoners.
Pakistan was the first country to condemn the reported desecration of the Qur’an which triggered violence in neighboring Afghanistan where 14 people died in clashes between protesters and Afghan police.
Pakistani religious parties staged rallies across the country on Friday in which angry protesters torched the US flag and criticized the policies of US President George W. Bush and his ally, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Newsweek said Sunday its story might be wrong, explaining that when asked again, the senior US official who had remembered seeing details of the Qur’an incident in a report could no longer be sure of the event.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan on Friday said the US administration takes the allegation “very seriously” and reaffirmed that the Defense Department had launched an investigation.
Pakistan has sent thousands of troops into its northwestern tribal districts bordering Afghanistan to hunt Al-Qaeda militants who may have sneaked across the frontier after the ousting of the Taleban in late 2001.
