Pakistan premier calls for end to US terror drone attacks

Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf has called on Washington to end the harmful and ineffective US assassination drone attacks in Pakistan.

According to Press TV, in a meeting with US Ambassador to Pakistan Richard Olson in the capital Islamabad on Thursday, Ashraf said the drone strikes were counterproductive.
The meeting came just hours after a US unmanned aircraft targeted a house in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan with two missiles, killing four people.
Pakistani tribal regions are attacked by US assassination drones almost regularly, with Washington claiming that militants are the targets. However, casualty figures clearly indicate that Pakistani civilians are the main victims.
The drone strikes have triggered massive anti-US demonstrations across Pakistan.
The relations between the two countries were strained in 2011, when Islamabad shut down major supply routes for the US-led foreign forces into Afghanistan, after the United States launched airstrikes on two Pakistani military checkpoints, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers.
The routes were reopened on July 3 after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apologized to Pakistan in a statement over the killing of the soldiers.