ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s prime minister on Monday dismissed as “absurd” allegations that the nation’s powerful military was “complicit or incompetent” in the case of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader who was killed a week ago by U.S. Navy SEALs inside a walled compound 35 air miles from Pakistan’s capital.

In his first address to parliament since bin Laden’s death, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said a three-star general would lead an inquiry into the “how, when and why” of bin Laden’s years-long stay in Abbottabad, home to Pakistan’s most prestigious military academy and the headquarters of two Pakistan army regiments.

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Protesters burn a replica of the U.S. flag at an anti-American demonstration Monday in Multan, Pakistan. Pakistan’s prime minister is rejecting allegations that national authorities were either complicit in hiding Osama bin Laden or incompetent in tracking him down. The Associated Press

But he left it clear that he did not expect the investigation would find that the military or Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, had conspired to keep bin Laden’s presence a secret.

“It is disingenuous for anyone to blame Pakistan or state institutions of Pakistan, including the ISI and the armed forces, for being in cahoots with the al-Qaida,” Gilani said. “It was al-Qaida and its affiliates that carried out hundreds of suicide bombings in nearly every town and city of Pakistan and also targeted political leaders, state institutions, the ISI and the General Headquarters (of the military).”

Whether the results of the probe will be made public wasn’t clear, but past inquiries by the military have been kept secret. So far, no officials have been fired over the episode, and few expect senior heads to roll.

Since the May 2 raid on the Abbottabad compound, Pakistani authorities have said little about bin Laden in the face of intense speculation that the armed forces or the ISI must have played a role in keeping him hidden.

In an interview Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” President Obama said bin Laden must have had a “support network” in Pakistan, though U.S. officials have said they have yet to find any evidence tying the Pakistani government to bin Laden.

Gilani noted that Pakistan has suffered from al-Qaida attacks since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S. He said that more than 5,000 Pakistani soldiers and 30,000 civilians had lost their lives in the “war on terror” and that the ISI had captured 40 top al-Qaida operatives, including the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the man who succeeded him as al-Qaida’s operations chief, Abu Faraj al Libi. Both men are currently imprisoned at the U.S. detention center for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Libi told U.S. interrogators that he, too, had lived for a year in Abbottabad in 2003 and 2004, according to secret intelligence files obtained by WikiLeaks and passed to McClatchy Newspapers.

“Allegations of complicity or incompetence are absurd,” Gilani said.

“The obvious question that has vexed everyone is how could Osama bin Laden hide in plain sight in the scenic surroundings of Abbottabad. Let’s not rush to judgment,” Gilani said. “We will not allow our detractors to succeed in offloading their own shortcomings and errors of omission and commission in a blame game that stigmatizes Pakistan.”

That reference appeared to be aimed at U.S. intelligence analysts’ long-stated belief that bin Laden was most likely hiding in Pakistan’s wild tribal regions near the border with Afghanistan.

The failure to find bin Laden until now in Abbottabad is “not only ours, but of all the intelligence agencies of the world,” Gilani said.

His 24-minute presentation was in English, aimed obviously at an international audience.

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