"Obviously bin Laden did have a support system, the issue is was that support system within the government and the state of Pakistan or within the society of Pakistan?" ambassador Husain Haqqani told CNN.
"We all know that there are people in Pakistan who share the same belief system and other extremists.... So that is a fact that there are people who probably protected him," he said.
"We will do a full inquiry into finding out why our intelligence services were not able to track him earlier."
In Abbottabad, a city home to an elite military academy, bin Laden lived for years in a custom-built three-story villa that dwarfed other homes and had towering walls with barbed wire.
John Brennan, Obama`s top counter-terrorism adviser, said earlier that the United States was in talks with Pakistan about how the most-wanted fugitive was able to live there, describing it as "inconceivable" that he did not have some kind of "support system in the country to allow him to stay there for an extended period of time."
"Any question about intelligence failures will definitely be addressed by us jointly," Haqqani said.
"What I find incredulous is the notion that somehow, just because there is a private support network in Pakistan, the state, the government and the military of Pakistan shouldn`t be believed."
But the ambassador indicated there were some in Pakistan that still had to come to terms with working with the Americans.
"Look, we have to as a nation in Pakistan re-evaluate our view of this whole problem," he said.
Some people after 9/11 "said we shouldn`t side with the United States because the United States is about to crumble like the Soviet Union did and we should actually support the Taliban," he said.
"You remember that, that changed. Pakistan has to come to terms with the fact and we will." (*)
Editor: Kunto Wibisono
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
