Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari has denied that the killing of Osama Bin Laden in his country is a sign of its failure to tackle terrorism.
In a forthright editorial in the Washington Post, Mr Zardari said his country was "perhaps the world's greatest victim of terrorism".
Bin Laden was shot dead by US forces in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.
Though Pakistan was not involved in the raid which killed him, Mr Zardari said it had played its part over the years.
Bin Laden was the founder and leader of al-Qaeda. He is believed to have ordered the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, as well as a number of other deadly bombings.
He was America's most wanted man but had eluded them for decades.
But US officials say they are "99.9%" sure that the man they shot and killed in a raid on a secure compound in the small city of Abbottabad and then buried at sea was Bin Laden.
The compound in Abbottabad is just a few hundred metres from the Pakistan Military Academy - the country's equivalent of West Point or Sandhurst
US officials have said it is "inconceivable" that Bin Laden did not have a support system in Pakistan.
'Enormous price'
But in his editorial, Mr Zardari angrily rejected this, saying Pakistan "has never been and never will be the hotbed of fanaticism that is often described by the media".
"Such baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn't reflect fact," he said.
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"Pakistan had as much reason to despise al-Qaeda as any nation. The war on terrorism is as much Pakistan's war as it is America's."
He said Pakistan had "paid an enormous price for its stand against terrorism" with repeated terror attacks on its civilians and security services.
"More of our soldiers have died than all of Nato's casualties combined. Two thousand police officers, as many as 30,000 innocent civilians and a generation of social progress for our people have been lost. "
Mr Zardari added that Pakistan would not be intimidated by threats from al-Qaeda.
US President Barack Obama has hailed the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden as a "good day for America", saying the world is now a safer and a better place.
He has also praised the "heroes" who carried out the operations and, in a speech to congressional leaders, called for them to show "the same sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11".
The US has put its embassies around the world on alert, warning Americans of the possibility of al-Qaeda reprisal attacks for Bin Laden's killing.
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