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CIA using Shamsi airbase for Predator strikes?

Daily Times Monitor

LONDON: The CIA is using the Shamsi airbase in Balochistan to launch the Predator drones that attack Al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan, The Times, London, has claimed.

According to The Times, the CIA has been using the airfield — originally built by Arab sheikhs for falconry expeditions — for at least a year. Key to the Times investigation is the unexplained delivery of 730,000 gallons of F34 aviation fuel to Shamsi last year. The Defence Energy Support Centre website shows that a civilian company was contracted to deliver the fuel, worth $3.2 million, from Pakistan Refineries near Karachi. A spokesman for the US embassy in Pakistan told The Times: “Shamsi is not the final destination.” However, he declined to elaborate.

“No. No. No. No. No. We unequivocally and emphatically can tell you that there is no basing of US troops in Pakistan,” he said. “There is no basing of US Air Force, Navy, Marines, Army, none, on the record and emphatically. I want that to be very clear. And that is the answer any way you want to put it. There is no base here, no troops billeted. We do not operate here.”

The CIA declined to comment, as did the Pentagon. But one senior Western source familiar with US operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan told The Times that the CIA “runs Predator flights routinely” from Shamsi. The experts The Times talked to said that Shamsi’s airstrip was too short for most aircraft, but big enough for Predators.

Major General Athar Abbas, the chief military spokesman, confirmed that US forces were using Shamsi. “The airfield is being used only for logistics,” he said, without elaborating.

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