WASHINGTON/ NEW YORK: US President Barack Obama said on Sunday that Osama bin Laden had a support network in Pakistan, as his senior aides spelled out a strategy that seeks to punish those responsible for hiding the Al Qaeda leader in Abbottabad where he was killed last week by American commandos.

“We think that there had to be some sort of support network for Bin Laden inside of Pakistan,” President Obama told the CBS show ‘60 Minutes’.

US National Security Adviser Thomas E. Donilon went a step ahead and categorically declared that “there was a network in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which supported Bin Laden”.

Mr Donilon also announced that President Obama had no plans to visit Pakistan in the near future.

“There is not a visit on his schedule at this point.”

The top US security official, however, acknowledged that he had “not seen evidence” to suggest “that the political, the military or the intelligence leadership would have foreknowledge of Bin Laden”.

Senator John Kerry, the US Congress’s top foreign policy official, further elaborated this point: “There is no evidence that at the highest level, General Pasha, General Kayani, the president of Pakistan, knew this, there’s no evidence at this moment.”Readmore”