|
|
January
12, 2008
US Alarmed by
Al Qaeda's Growth
in Pakistan
Washington
The US government is "extremely concerned" about the emergence of Al
Qaeda in Pakistan, but will not act without a nod from the Pakistani
government.
"There are concerns now about how much Al Qaeda turned inward,
literally, inside Pakistan, as well as the kind of planning,
training, financing and support that the worldwide effort is," Adm.
Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told
reporters here Friday.
Expressing Pentagon's extreme concern over the development, he said:
"I think continued pressure there will have to be brought".
Adm. Mullen, however, added: "Pakistan is a sovereign country and
certainly it's really up to ... President (Pervez) Musharraf and
certainly his advisers and his military to address that problem
directly."
US intelligence officials suspect Al Qaeda is establishing training
camps in Pakistan's tribal region along the border with Afghanistan
and recruiting fighters from as far away as Europe and Africa.
They suggest that the area is an operational command centre for Al
Qaeda's senior leaders including Osama bin Laden and his deputy
Ayman al-Zawahri.
US officials are worried that Al Qaeda's strong presence along the
border is destabilizing progress that has been made in Afghanistan,
according to the Washington Times.
But Pakistan has not taken kindly to newspaper reports that the CIA
and the US military want to begin covert operations in Pakistan to
target Al Qaeda.
"Nobody will come here until we ask them to come. And we haven't
asked them," Musharraf told Singapore's Straits Times in an
interview published Friday.
He said a unilateral intervention would be seen as an invasion
against the sovereignty of Pakistan.
Senior military and intelligence officials privately say that they
are eager to gain at least tacit approval from Pakistan to loosen
restrictions on the CIA, allowing operations against selected
targets in the unruly tribal areas, according to The New York Times.
On Thursday, Pakistan's ambassador to the US, Mahmud Ali Durrani,
told the Washington Times that contrary to reports that terrorists
were entering Afghanistan from strongholds in Pakistan, it is a
"reverse flow" with terrorists entering Pakistan from the outside
and recruiting members within.
Durrani
added that the Pakistani military was capable of handling the
growing threat of Al Qaeda in the region and that talk of sending US
troops into Pakistan, regardless of Musharraf's permission, was not
helpful to Pakistan or Pakistan-US relations.
"We never said we don't need any help," Durrani added. "We've said
we don't need any interference."
Pointing out that there are nearly 100,000 Pakistani troops in the
vast tribal area, much more than the number of US troops in
Afghanistan, Durrani said: "Pakistan has caught, captured, killed
the most Al Qaeda people in this world. We've had the most
casualties in our region."
Pentagon is now mulling sending an additional 3,000 troops to
Afghanistan, Adm. Mullen said.
January 12, 2008
IANS | Top
|
|
