Pakistan Tells U.S. It Must Sharply Cut C.I.A. Activities

By JANE PERLEZ and ISMAIL KHAN
NYT

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan has demanded that the United States steeply reduce the number of Central Intelligence Agency operatives and Special Operations forces working in Pakistan, and that it put on hold C.I.A. drone strikes aimed at militants in northwest Pakistan, a sign of the near collapse of cooperation between the two testy allies.

The demand that the United States scale back its presence is the immediate fallout of the arrest in Pakistan of Raymond A. Davis, a C.I.A. security officer who killed two men in broad daylight during a mugging in January, Pakistani and American officials said in interviews.

In all, about 335 American personnel — C.I.A. officers and contractors and Special Operations forces — were being asked to leave the country, said a Pakistani official closely involved in the decision. The cuts threatened to badly hamper American efforts — either through drone strikes or Pakistani military training — to combat militants who use Pakistan as a base to fight American forces in Afghanistan and plot terrorist attacks abroad.

The reductions were personally demanded by the chief of the Pakistan army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, said Pakistani and American officials, who requested anonymity while discussing the sensitive issue.

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