A senior Pakistani army official has described a Nato cross-border air attack that killed 24 soldiers at the weekend as a deliberate, blatant act of aggression.
Islamabad said yesterday it would not attend a major conference on the post-2014 future of Afghanistan in Germany next week.
The move was seen as an angry riposte to the attack that threatens to set back peace efforts in Pakistan's troubled neighbour.
Continuing Pakistan's angry tone today, Major General Ishfaq Nadeem, director general of military operations, said Nato forces were alerted they were attacking Pakistani posts but helicopters kept firing.
His comments, from a briefing to editors, were carried in local newspapers today that characterised the attack as blatant aggression.
"Detailed information of the posts was already with Isaf (International Security Assistance Force), including map references, and it was impossible that they did not know these to be our posts," The News quoted Mahor Nadeem as saying at the briefing held at army headquarters yesterday.
Nato helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military border posts in northwest Pakistan on Saturday in the worst incident of its kind since Islamabad allied itself with Washington in 2001 in the war on militancy.
Fury over the attack is growing, with more protests and tough editorials in newspapers.
The Nato attack shifted attention away from Pakistan's widely questioned performance against militants who cross its border to attack US and other Nato forces in Afghanistan, and has given the military a chance to reassert itself.
"It is definitely not Pakistan's intention to work against the rest of the world," foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar told Dawn News television today.
"But the rest of the world also has to understand that if they have pushed Pakistan into this corner, violated red lines, then they have denied the basis of partnership," she said.
Islamabad's decision to boycott next week's meeting in Bonn will deprive the talks of a key player that could nudge Taliban militants into a peace process as Nato combat troops prepare to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton described Pakistan's decision not to attend as "regrettable" but said she hoped to secure Islamabad's co-operation in future.
"Nothing will be gained by turning our backs on mutually beneficial cooperation," Mrs Clinton told reporters in South Korea.
More than 1,000 Pakistani religious students protested in Lahore city yesterday, yelling "Death to Nato" and "Death to America."
In the city of Multan, protesters burned an effigy of US president Barack Obama and an American flag.
Nato hopes an investigation it promised will defuse the crisis and that confidence-building measures can repair ties.
While officials on either side of the border disagree on the circumstances of the incident, it is possible that a retaliatory attack by Nato troops took a tragic, mistaken turn in harsh terrain where differentiating friend from foe can be difficult.
Major Nadeem was adamant Nato had been told it was attacking Pakistani positions. "They continued regardless, with impunity," The News quoted him as saying.
Reuters