U.S. officials suspect that Pakistan gave the Chinese regime access to design details of the downed U.S. stealth helicopter that crashed during the U.S. raid that killed former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The Financial Times broke the story, reporting Sunday that Pakistani authorities allowed Chinese military engineers to photograph and take samples from the stealth copter.
“We have reason to suspect China was given access but we cannot confirm it definitively,” said an unnamed U.S. official quoted by CNN on Monday.
The disclosure is one of many recent incidents highlighting the growing distrust between Islamabad and Washington.
Pakistani officials were furious that the United States had carried out the raid in May without first informing Islamabad, and later hinted that the Chinese were interested in seeing the wreckage.
A source told the Financial Times that the United States asked Pakistan not to let others view the wreckage.
“We had explicitly asked the Pakistanis in the immediate aftermath of the raid not to let anyone have access to the damaged remains of the helicopter,” the source said, according to a Reuters report.
Beijing has a strong military tie with Islamabad and is a major supplier of weapons to Pakistan’s military.
When asked about the incident, U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said the case would “take us into intelligence.”
“So I’m not going to comment on that one at all,” she said.
