Shooting of unarmed bin Laden, burial

WASHINGTON — While it is not yet certain who will replace Osama bin Laden to lead Al-Qaeda, CIA Director Leon Panetta said Tuesday that whoever take his place will becomes America's new public enemy number one.

but for several Muslim leaders, the more unsettling issue is whether the al Qaeda leader's burial at sea was contrary to Islamic practice.

The White House said on Tuesday that bin Laden had resisted the U.S. team which stormed his Pakistan hideout and that there had been concerns he would "oppose the capture operation.

Officials blamed the “great haste” with which information about the operation had been gathered for errors in the briefing.

The picture of what happened both before and during the raid became even more confused when government sources in Pakistan and Afghanistan disputed key facts about the commando mission.

Panetta said the US government does not have any intelligence indicating that "Pakistan was... aware that bin Laden was there, or that this compound was a place where he was hiding."

Noting that the compound was close to an elite military academy and that bin Laden had been living there about five years, Panetta nonetheless pressed Islamabad to provide more answers.

Former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt told German TV the operation could have incalculable consequences in the Arab world at a time of unrest there.

It was quite clearly a violation of international law.

Pakistan should be declared a terrorist state, Panetta acknowledged that the US-Pakistani relationship is a "very complicated and difficult" one, but warned the ties should not be severed.

A senior Muslim cleric in New Delhi, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, said U.S. troops could have easily captured bin Laden.

America is promoting jungle rule everywhere, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan or Libya. People have remained silent for long but now it has crossed all limits.

Pakistan claimed yesterday it had been sharing information about the compound where bin Laden was staying since 2009.

Officials said they were not aware that bin Laden was staying there. The US is convinced that bin Laden received support from members of the Pakistani authorities.