US President Barack Obama has appeared on US TV to defend the decision not to publish photos of Osama Bin Laden's body.
"It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of someone who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitment to violence and additional propoganda tool -n that's not who we are", President Obama said on CBS's Sixty Minutes.
"Keep in mind we are absolutely certain this is him, we've done DNA sampling and testing."
"There is no doubt that Bin Laden is dead. Certainly there is... no doubt among al-Qaeda members that he is dead. And so we don't think that a photograph in and of itself is going to make any difference", he said.
Obama had consulted members of his national security team about whether to release the photo which he has seen, before taking his decision.
"We discussed this internally" he said.
Whiet House spokesman Jay Carney said earlier there had been debate within the US administration about whether to release the images, which he described as "graphic photographs of someone who was shot in the face - the head, rather."
"It is not in our national security interests to allow those images, as has been in the past been the case, to become icons to rally opinion against the United States," Carney said.
Bin Laden's identity had been firmly established, Carney said, and Obama saw "no other compelling reason" to release them, given the potential for national security risks.
The death of the world's most wanted man was announced by Obama late Sunday in an address to the nation just hours after US commandos raided the Pakistani compound where Bin Laden had been hiding.
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