The United States military has decided that no service members will face disciplinary charges for their involvement in a NATO airstrike on Salala check-post on November 26, 2011 that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
According to a New York Times report, the US military has finalised its second inquiry report in which it has held Pakistan army personnel responsible for the incident.
The American findings set up a second inquiry to determine whether any American military personnel should be punished. That recently completed review said no, three senior military officials said, explaining that the Americans fired in self-defense. Other mistakes that contributed to the fatal cross-border strike were the regrettable result of battlefield confusion, they said.
“We found nothing criminally negligent on the part of any individual in our investigations of the incident,” said one senior American military official involved in the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the results of the review had not been made public.
An American investigation in December found fault with both American and Pakistani troops for the deadly exchange of fire, but noted that the Pakistanis fired first from two border posts that were not on coalition maps, and that they kept firing even after the Americans tried to warn them that they were shooting at allied troops. Pakistan has strongly rejected these conclusions and ascribed most of the blame to the American forces.
The military’s decision is expected to anger Pakistani officials at a time when the two countries are gingerly trying to patch up a security relationship left in tatters over the past year from a series of episodes, including the shooting of two Pakistanis in Lahore by a C.I.A. contractor, the Navy SEALs raid in Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden and the deadly airstrike in November.
Pakistan’s Parliament is scheduled to resume debate as early as Monday on a major review of relations with the United States, a debate that the Obama administration hopes will bring a resumption of full diplomatic relations and the reopening of NATO supply lines into Afghanistan through Pakistan. As part of that debate, Pakistani legislators have demanded an unconditional formal apology from the United States for the fatal airstrike.
In the highest-level meeting of leaders of the two countries since the accident, President Obama is to meet with Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, on Tuesday in Seoul, South Korea, after a nuclear security summit meeting there, to discuss Afghanistan and other security issues. But Mr. Obama is not expected to go beyond the regrets he conveyed to Pakistan soon after the airstrike on Nov. 25.
Some administration aides said at the time that they worried that if Mr. Obama formally apologized to Pakistan, it could provide ammunition for his Republican opponents in the presidential race.
Pakistan has sought a full apology from President Barack Obama for the strikes. NATO and US officials have voiced regret over the incident.