We could not afford to loose Osama again: Hillary

Hillary said the information was also kept within a small group in the Obama administration.

Islamabad: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday said the information on the Abbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden was kept away from Pakistan because "we could not afford to loose him again."

Hillary however said the information was also kept within a small group in the Obama administration.

"We considered such an operation vital to our national security, that we did not share information in our own government beyond a very small group of people. "And that was for obvious reason that it was a sensitive operation," she said replying to a query on why Pakistan was not informed about the `Operation Neptune Spear`, initiated by the US Navy SEALs commandos to snuff out al Qaeda chief bin Laden on May 2.

She said the US had been searching for the then al Qaeda chief for over a decade and "we could not afford to loose him again, the way we lost him in Tora Bora (in December 2001)." Hillary, who was speaking to a roundtable with Pakistani television journalists, added, "Therefore we took took action that was limited in scope as possible."

On the issue of Pak-US relations, she said it was important to deepen and broaden the cooperation.

PTI