Pakistan Warns U.S. Against Airstrikes

President Pervez Musharraf told a senior U.S. official Saturday that the United States must not repeat airstrikes such as the one apparently aimed at Al Qaeda operatives that killed civilians in a remote village.

Also Saturday, two Pakistani intelligence officials said a captured Al Qaeda leader had informed interrogators that he had met Ayman Zawahiri, the group’s second in command, last year at one of the homes that was hit.

Musharraf assured visiting Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns that Pakistan would not waver in its support for Washington’s declared war on terrorism but said such airstrikes must never occur again, a Foreign Ministry official said. The attack prompted protests across Pakistan calling for Musharraf’s ouster.

The comments were the president’s first public reaction to the Jan. 13 attack on the village of Damadola, near the border with Afghanistan.

The strike, which hit three homes in the mountainous Bajaur tribal region, is believed to have killed at least four associates of Zawahiri and at least 13 civilians, including women and children.

The Foreign Ministry official said Musharraf told Burns: “What happened in Bajaur must not be repeated.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Musharraf apparently was referring to his country’s long-standing policy of prohibiting the U.S. forces in neighboring Afghanistan from pursuing militants across the border into Pakistan or attacking them in the country without permission. Government officials have said they were not informed of the airstrike ahead of time.

Pakistani officials suspect at least four foreign militants may have died in the attack, including Midhat Mursi, an explosives and chemical weapons expert, and a son-in-law of Zawahiri.

Mursi, an Egyptian, is on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorism suspects with a $5-million bounty.

The Pakistan and U.S. governments, however, have not confirmed the identity of any dead Al Qaeda suspects.

Pakistani authorities said they were looking for the graves of the dead militants.

One official said the four bodies were removed by a local pro-Taliban cleric “and then were shifted to an undisclosed location.”

Pakistani officials reportedly have said that the Egyptian-born Zawahiri skipped the meeting and was not killed in the attack.