Firming up Pakistans stand on the NATOs unprovoked attack on Pakistani soldiers that killed 24 of them and injured a greater number on Saturday, President Zardari turned down the UAEs request to extend the 15-day deadline for the vacation of Shamsi airbase by the Americans. UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan had called on the President for this purpose on Monday. Another major development that took place on Tuesday when the issue continued to occupy the attention of official, private as well as public circles was the federal cabinet decision not to attend the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan that is scheduled to take place on December 3. Pakistans absence would be in line with its post-attack reaction and would help drive in the participants the severity of the hurt and deep sense of betrayal by those who call themselves as our allies, which the entire spectrum of our society has felt. Apart from that, the value of the decision the conference would be questionable as far as their implementation is concerned. Prime Minister Gilani emphatically told the US, in an interview with the CNN, that there was no possibility of business as usual with the US. In response to a question whether the US-Pakistan alliance could continue (under the circumstances), Mr Gilani said that only if there was mutual respect and mutual interest adding that right now both were lacking. If I cant protect the sovereignty of my country how can we say its a mutual respect and mutual interest, he maintained. The public fury, in the form of street protests in virtually every corner of the country, continued unabated, as the political parties and the media also denounced the brutal attack that murdered our soldiers knowing well enough that their target was our military personnel and not the militants whom, the NATO now pretends, they were pursuing. Building on the PML-Ns call for convening the National Assembly to discuss the issue, the federal cabinet decided to refer the matter to the parliamentary Committee on National Security, which would formulate a report for a joint session of Parliament. And calls for standing firm on our stand continued to pour in at the news desk of the media. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, on its part, demanded Pakistan to respond in kind warning that the Americans would persist in infringing Pakistans sovereignty and operations on its soil. The ISPR briefed newspaper editors and representatives of the electronic media on Tuesday. The army was working on a strategy to ensure that such incidents do not take place and demanded that the culprits, those who ordered the attack as well as those who executed it, should be brought to book. Besides, it had not been satisfied with the NATO alliances inquiries that had been held in the cases of previous such incidents. The ISPR also argued that the kind of equipment at these posts was only meant to ward off militants and that the army had at the posts not been confronting an enemy. But with friends like these...