US OFFICIALS WELCOMED visitors on board the USS Carl Vinson warship in the Philippines on Saturday. It is the ship from which Osama bin Laden’s body was buried at sea.
Officials did not discuss the ultra-secretive attack that killed bin Laden with US defence officials taking measures to ensure the security of the operatives involved in the 2 May assault on a walled fortress in Abbottabad, Pakistan, particularly the Navy SEAL team that killed the world’s most wanted terrorist.
A group of journalists were invited to tour and talk to sailors aboard the 97,000-ton Carl Vinson, which anchored off Manila along with three other warships on Sunday at the start of a four-day routine port call and goodwill visit to the Philippines.
Philippines president Benigno Aquino III was accompanied by senior members of his Cabinet and military chief of staff to the massive aircraft carrier as it traveled in the South China Sea toward the the country which is seen as a key Asian anti-terrorism ally.
During the 30-minute ferry ride to the Vinson, US Embassy spokeswoman Wossenyelesh Mazengia told about two dozen journalists that nobody aboard the carrier would talk about bin Laden.
The one thing on everybody’s mind — bin Laden’s burial from the Carl Vinson just 12 days earlier — did not come up.
US Navy officials did not touch the sensitive subject and Aquino’s group saw it fit not to ask questions.
US special forces have been training and arming Filipino soldiers battling Al Qaeda-linked militants in the southern Philippines since 2003.
The Carl Vinson came from the North Arabian Sea, where it had received a US SEAL team, which carried bin Laden’s body after killing the long-wanted Al Qaeda leader in a raid on his walled compound near a Pakistani military academy.
Pentagon officials have said that on the carrier, bin Laden’s body was placed in a “weighted bag,” an officer made religious remarks and the remains were put on a flat board and tipped into the sea.
- AP
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