Islamabad (ANTARA News/AFP) - Pakistan told the United States to leave a remote desert air base reportedly used as a hub for covert CIA drone attacks, Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar was quoted by state media as saying Wednesday.

His remarks are the latest indication of Pakistan attempting to limit US activities since a clandestine American military raid killed Osama bin Laden on May 2.

"We have told them (US officials) to leave the air base," national news agency APP quoted Mukhtar as telling a group of journalists in his office.

Images said to be of US Predator drones at Shamsi base have been published by Google Earth in the past. The air strip is 900 kilometres (560 miles) southwest of the capital Islamabad in Baluchistan province.

A US embassy spokeswoman told AFP there were no US military personnel at Shamsi.

American drone attacks on Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan`s northwestern semi-autonomous tribal belt are hugely unpopular among a general public opposed to the government`s alliance with Washington.

Despite condemning the drone strikes in public, US documents leaked by Internet whistleblower Wikileaks late last year showed that Pakistani civilian and militant leaders had privately consented to the drone campaign.

CNN reported in April that US military personnel had left the base, said to be a key site for American drone operations, in the fallout over public killings by a CIA contractor in Lahore and his subsequent detention.

Reports said operations at the base, which Washington has not publicly acknowledged, were conducted with tacit Pakistani military consent.

Neither does the United States officially confirm Predator drone attacks, but its military and the CIA operating in Afghanistan are the only forces in the region that deploy the armed, unmanned aircraft.

Pakistani and US officials have frequently been drawn into slanging matches, played out in the press, since the bin Laden raid humiliated the military and invited allegations of incompetence and complicity, as well as damaging trust. (*)

Editor: Kunto Wibisono
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