ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan's president has denied suspicions that his country's security forces may have sheltered Osama bin Laden.

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Asif Ali Zardari says Pakistani forces weren't involved in Monday's operation against bin Laden but that Pakistan's "decade of cooperation" with the US led to his elimination.

Bin Laden was killed in a large house close to a military academy in the bustling northwestern town of Abbottabad, not in the remote Afghan border region as many had assumed, raising questions over how security forces were not aware of his presence.

Zardari says in an opinion piece in Monday's Washington Post that "such baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn't reflect fact."

It was Pakistan's first formal comment on the suspicions.