Pakistan has not received a formal request from the US for access to or handing over Osama bin Laden's widows who are in the custody of authorities, Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir said today.
The US has not contacted Pakistan with regard to the issue of handing over bin Laden’s widows, Bashir told reporters outside parliament.
Other sources said that no extradition requests had been received from the countries of origin of bin Laden's widows – Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
The US administration has asked Pakistan to grant its investigators access to three of bin Laden's widows who were taken into custody from the Al-Qaeda chief's compound in Abbottabad after he was killed during a raid on May 2.
Three of bin Laden's widows and several of his children and grandchildren are in the "protective custody" of Pakistani authorities. Reports have said some persons injured in the US raid are being treated in a military hospital in Rawalpindi.
Bashir further said that US President Barack Obama's visit to Pakistan had not been postponed though no date for it has been confirmed as yet.
He said that if the US wants Pakistan's cooperation, it "needed to stop sending messages through the media" and instead contact the Pakistan government directly.
Fighting the war on terrorism is in Pakistan's own interest and, so far, the country's relations with the US are heading in the right direction, he said.
Tensions between the US and Pakistani have increased since US special forces killed the world's most wanted man in the compound near the Pakistani Military Academy in Abbottabad, 120 km from Islamabad.
The US has called on Pakistan to investigate how bin Laden had lived for years in a garrison city that is home to thousands of soldiers.
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