France's foreign minister said Tuesday he was not convinced Osama bin Laden could have gone undetected in Pakistan until his death and would ask Pakistan's prime minister to explain at an impending meeting. "I find it a little difficult to imagine that the presence of someone like bin Laden in a big compound in a relatively small town could go completely unnoticed," Alain Juppe said, ahead of a dinner in Paris with Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
"I will ask Mr Gilani this evening... to explain how things happened and so we will have a dialogue which I hope will be enlightening," Juppe said. "Pakistan's position lacks clarity in our view, I hope that we will have more clarity," he added, after US forces swooped on bin Laden's lair in the well-to-do town of Abbottabad that is also home to an elite military academy. Gilani was also due to meet with France's President Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Francois Fillon on Wednesday.
Fillon told parliament that Pakistan needed to "modernise its organisation, clarify its relations with certain organisations." "We will tell the Pakistani prime minister that we're at his side... to help reinforce the fight against terrorism," Fillon said, adding that Islamabad must "fight both Pakistani and Afghan Taliban without respite."
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