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Pakistan may let US
investigators question the wives of Osama bin Laden, a US official
said, a decision that could begin to stabilise relations between the
prickly allies that have been severely strained by the killing of the
al Qaeda leader.

However, senior Pakistani government officials in Islamabad said Tuesday no decision had been taken on the US request.

Bin Laden was shot
dead on May 2 in a top-secret raid in the northern Pakistani town of
Abbottabad to the embarrassment of Pakistan which has for years denied
the world’s most wanted man was on its soil.

The government is
under pressure to explain how the al Qaeda leader was found in the
garrison town, a short distance from the main military academy, and
faces criticism at home over the perceived violation of sovereignty by
the US commando team.

Pakistani
cooperation is crucial to combating Islamist militants and to bringing
stability to Afghanistan and the US administration has been keen to
contain the fallout.

US investigators,
who have been sifting through a huge stash of material seized in bin
Laden’s high-walled compound, want to question his three wives as they
seek to trace his movements and roll up his global militant network.

“The Pakistanis now
appear willing to grant access. Hopefully they’ll carry through on the
signals they’re sending,” a US official familiar with the matter said
in Washington.

There was no immediate comment from the White House.

A Pakistani
government official denied that permission for the US questioning of
the women had been given, saying local investigators had yet to finish
their inquiry.

“It’s too early to even think about it,” said the official, referring to the US request to question the women.

Pakistan says the
three wives, one from Yemen and two from Saudi Arabia, and their
children, will be repatriated and Pakistan was making contacts with
their countries but they had yet to say they would take them, the
official said.

Bin Laden’s
discovery has deepened suspicion that Pakistan’s pervasive
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency, which has a long history
of contacts with militants, may have had ties with the al Qaeda leader,
or that some of its agents did.

US legislators have
been asking tough questions, with some calling for a cut in billions of
dollars of US aid to the nuclear-armed Muslim country.

But the United States has stopped short of accusing Pakistan of providing shelter to bin Laden.

“We believe it is
very important to maintain a cooperative relationship with Pakistan,
precisely because it’s in our national security interests to do so,”
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday.

NATO
Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Western governments had no
alternative to cooperating with Pakistan in the fight against Islamic
militants.

“If we are to
assure long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan and beyond, then we
need positive engagement with Pakistan,” Rasmussen told the World
Affairs Council in Atlanta Monday.

In a reminder of
Pakistan’s own struggle against al Qaeda-linked militants, a bomb
outside a court in the northwestern town of Nowshera killed a
policewoman.

“Absurd”

Pakistani-US
relations were already at a low ebb after a string of diplomatic
disputes over issues including a big attack by a US drone aircraft in
March and CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who shot dead two Pakistanis in
January.

Potentially
stirring tension further, a Pakistani TV channel and a newspaper have
published what they said was the name of the undercover CIA station
chief in Islamabad.

US officials said the name disclosed in Pakistani media was wrong and the station chief would remain at his post.

They said they
believe the leak was a calculated attempt to divert attention from US
demands for explanations of how bin Laden could have hidden for years
in Pakistan.

Last year, after
the chief of the Pakistani ISI was named in a US civil case over
attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai, the then-head of the CIA’s
Islamabad station was named by Pakistani media and forced to leave the
country.

Pakistan Prime
Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, in his first major address since bin
Laden’s killing, rejected suggestions of incompetence or even
complicity in hiding the al Qaeda leader.

“Allegations of
complicity or incompetence are absurd,” Gilani told parliament Monday,
saying it was disingenuous for anyone to accuse Pakistan of “being in
cahoots” with al Qaeda.

US President Barack
Obama said Sunday that bin Laden likely had “some sort” of a support
network inside Pakistan, but added it would take investigations by
Pakistan and the United States to find out the nature of that support.

Pakistan’s main
opposition party has called on Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari to
resign over the breach of sovereignty by US special forces who slipped
in from Afghanistan on helicopters to storm the bin Laden compound.

Pakistan has launched its own investigation and the military is due to brief parliament in a closed session on Friday.