Yahoo News
August 16, 2011
Part of a damaged helicopter is seen lying near the compound after U.S. Navy
SEAL …
BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Tuesday
dismissed a report that Pakistan gave it access to an advanced U.S. "stealth"
helicopter that crashed during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May.
During the raid, one of two Blackhawk
helicopters -- believed to use advanced stealth technology -- crashed, forcing
U.S. commandos to abandon it. The Financial Times reported on Sunday that
Pakistani authorities gave China access to the wreckage, despite CIA requests to
Islamabad to keep the wreckage under wraps.
China's Ministry of Defense denied this in a
one-sentence statement, Beijing's first public response to the report.
"This report is totally unfounded and
extremely absurd," said the statement on the ministry's website.
(www.mod.gov.cn)
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence
Directorate, the country's top spy agency, also earlier denied the report.
The Financial Times said Pakistan allowed
Chinese intelligence officials to take pictures of the crashed helicopter and
take samples of its special skin that helped the American raid evade Pakistani
radar.
One U.S. official, speaking on condition of
anonymity, earlier told Reuters there was reason to believe Pakistan had allowed
the Chinese to inspect the aircraft. But the official could not confirm with
certainty that this had happened.
The surviving tail section of the downed
helicopter was returned to the United States after a trip by U.S. Senator John
Kerry in May, a spokesman for the U.S. embassy told Reuters.
Pakistan's already tense relationship with
the United States, its major donor, was badly bruised after U.S. forces killed
bin Laden in May in Pakistan where he appears to have been in hiding for several
years.
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