Who controls Shamsi airbase?

As defence minister, Ahmad Mukhtar, should be one of the best-informed persons about Pakistan's defence matters and security issues. May be he is so, but the nonchalance that generally abounds in his remarks and comments in encounters with the media, tends to portray him just the opposite.
For instance, during his visit to China as member of Prime Minister Gilani's entourage he had stated that the Chinese wanted to take over and manage the Gwadar port, only to be instantly rebutted by the host government that no such thing had come up for discussion between the two sides. His take on the Shamsi airbase - that Pakistan had asked the US government to vacate the base - was upstaged by American officials in that the base would remain in their control. "The base is neither vacated, nor being vacated", they insisted. His cabinet colleague, Information Minister, Firdous Ashiq Awan too, has rubbished his statement by saying that his statement was perhaps for the media. Was it the defence minister's deliberate casualness or just lack of relevant information about various issues of growing contention between the governments of Pakistan and the United States that informed his comments about the future of the Shamsi airbase or the non-payment of Coalition Support Fund (CSF), we would like to know. Even more importantly, if the Pak-US bilateral relationship is actually in such a state of decline as he projected, why hasn't he then said so on the floor of the parliament.
Going by the choice of his words in describing the dramatic change in the Americans' attitude towards Pakistan, an unmistakable impression begins to form that the erstwhile partners have arrived at a fork in the road they were traversing together for the last decade or so. We would like to hear from the Defence Minister, in unambiguous and clear terms, as to where Pakistan stands, vis-à-vis the United States' interests and policies in the region, particularly with respect to the current status of the Shamsi airbase. More so, also for his reported statement that "when they (US forces) will not operate from there (Shamsi base) no drone attacks will be carried out". With the Obama administration, of late, resorting to threats of unilateral action against the so-called safe havens in Pakistan and its generals' appetite for more war in the region, the people of Pakistan should know where they stand and what awaits them as the Afghanistan war shifts the battlefields eastward. When he says Pakistan 'will have to review its relationship with Washington,' who is it that he wants to review, if it is not the government of which he is the defence minister?
Ahmad Mukhtar's assertion that Pakistan has asked the United States to withdraw its forces from the Shamsi airbase is indeed intriguing - because the base was said to have been vacated already, a report confirmed by the US embassy. Last April US embassy spokesman Alberto Rodriguez was quoted having said that there were no US forces at the Shamsi airbase, and the same was confirmed by the Pakistani army and air force sources. It is also confusing whether the base was used as a reconnaissance facility or as a predator drone takeoff base, and how the base was passed onto the Americans by the UAE, who had it on a long lease. Mukhtar's perception that the trust deficit between the two countries has aggravated, 'especially because the US has withheld payments of the Coalition Support Fund' is only a part of the whole truth. Such a conclusion tends to suggest that Pakistan is in this war only for money - a suggestion the minister would have made only unwittingly. As a cabinet minister, Ahmad Mukhtar is supposed to be talking in a categorical tone because he is Pakistan's top defence official and his comments and remarks are nothing but policy statements. Let us hear him on the Shamsi airbase, once more.