Three dead as US Pakistan standoff continues
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A United States drone strike has reportedly killed three people in Pakistan's north western tribal regions.
Pakistan security officials say the drone fired two missiles in a central market in north Waziristan near the Afghan border.
The US has had to defend the use of drones after UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay's recent call for a UN investigation into US drone strikes in Pakistan.
She questioned their legality, saying they kill innocent civilians.
The UN human rights chief provided no statistics but called for an investigation into civilian casualties, which she said were difficult to track.
She said UN chief Ban Ki-moon had urged states to be 'more transparent' about circumstances in which drones are used and take necessary precautions to ensure that the attacks involving drones comply with applicable international law.
The US and Pakistan have been at loggerheads over reopening NATO supply lines that Pakistan shut in fury on November 26, when US air strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
Islamabad initially conditioned reopening the lines on an American apology for the deaths of the 24 soldiers and an end to drone strikes, but neither is likely to happen.
There has been a dramatic increase in US drone strikes in Pakistan since last month when a NATO summit failed to cement a deal to open supply lines crossing in to Afghanistan.
Washington considers Pakistan's semi-autonomous northwestern tribal belt the main hub of Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants plotting attacks on the West and in Afghanistan.
Distrust over Pakistan's refusal to do more to eliminate the Islamist threat has become a major thorn in increasingly dire Pakistani-US relations.
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