Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif declares end to secret approval of U.S. drone strikes

[unhappycamper]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/10/193519/pakistans-nawaz-sharif-declares.html



Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif

Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif declares end to secret approval of U.S. drone strikes
By Tom Hussain | McClatchy Foreign Staff
Posted on Monday, June 10, 2013

ISLAMABAD — In office for less than a week, Pakistan’s new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, vented his anger Monday at two recent U.S. drone strikes, all but accusing his country’s overbearing military of lying to Pakistanis about its cooperation with the CIA to eliminate terrorism suspects in northwest tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.

"The policy of protesting against drone strikes for public consumption, while working behind the scenes to make them happen, is not on," Sharif said, according to an official statement issued after the first meeting of his Cabinet.

Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party won a majority of seats in the National Assembly, Pakistan’s equivalent of the House of Representatives, in a general election May 11. His assumption of office last Wednesday was the first time that a full-term democratic administration had handed power to an elected successor.

Whether Sharif can change the balance of power with the military, which has staged four coups since Pakistan’s independence in 1947 and retains a stranglehold over foreign and defense policy, remains to be seen.