US ropes in Pak security experts, India jittery

Indrani Bagchi, TNN

NEW DELHI: As new US Centcom commander General David Petraeus begins a strategy security review in Tampa, Florida, the presence of two security
analysts from Pakistan as consultants have raised eyebrows here. Ahmed Rashid, an acknowledged authority on the Taliban and Afghanistan, and Shuja Nawaz, author of a book on the Pakistan army, have been named "consultants" at the classified review starting in Florida this weekend. The aim is to review the war plans in Afghanistan and Iraq as the Barack Obama administration considers the wisdom of a troop surge in Afghanistan. About 100 military specialists, known as the Joint Strategic Assessment Team, will help with the wide-ranging assessment and are expected to report in February. They will be helped by policy officials from the participating countries. India's concern stems from the possibility that Rashid's latest recommendation of the "grand bargain" to solve Afghanistan's mammoth problems of security and terrorism may have found fertile ground in the Obama set. Certainly, the central argument in the article draws the same connections between "solving" terrorism in Afghanistan and "solving" Kashmir that Obama has been advocating for a while, including in the same journal some time ago. In a much quoted article in the esteemed 'Foreign Affairs' journal, Rashid and America's best known Afghanistan expert Barnett Rubin wrote that Pakistan would be persuaded to stop supporting terrorism if India can be persuaded to solve Kashmir, which they argue to be a bigger strategic threat to Pakistan than terrorists on their soil, which "can be controlled". This is a "grand bargain" that India will not support. However, sources said, it's premature to be hyperventilating about such a diplomatic initiative. Indian policymakers believe that once the new US administration takes shape, the realities of the situation will become much clearer to the new Washington. At its worst, India expects to have to do some diplomacy to counter any such perceptions. The Rashid-Rubin article goes on to make the following suggestions:
• Pakistan should not be "pressured", because its security establishment believes that it is threatened by a US-India-Afghan alliance to dismember Pakistan.
• Pakistan's military command continues to believe the two-nation theory and wants Kashmir to be incorporated into the South Asian homeland for Muslims. To this extent, Afganistan, they say, is "within Pakistan's security perimeter".
Pakistan continues to believe that the Indian threat is superior to stabilizing Afghanistan. The article goes on to recommend a "contact group on
the region authorized by the UN Security Council. This contact group, including the five permanent members and perhaps others (NATO, Saudi Arabia), could promote dialogue between India and Pakistan about their respective interests in Afghanistan and about finding a solution to the Kashmir dispute." According to the article, the rest of the world should be involved in a single exercise — to "reassure Pakistan" that it is under no threat. And the best way to do that would be to "resolve Kashmir". Only then will Pakistan lift its umbrella of support of terrorists and terrorism. In short, Pakistan should be rewarded for its support to terrorism. "A central purpose of the contact group would be to assure Pakistan that the international community is committed to its territorial integrity — and to help resolve the Afghan and Kashmir border issues so as to better define Pakistan's territory," the article says. For good measure, the US should consider a nuclear deal for Pakistan and India should "become more transparent" about its activities in Afghanistan, it adds.

Musharraf resigns (Photos from NewYork Times)

All photos from NewYork times

Timeline: Musharraf's Rule

Oct. 13, 1999:
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the chief of the Pakistani army, ousts Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup after Mr. Sharif attempts to dismiss him.
Pakistan Army Seizes Power Hours After Prime Minister Dismisses His Military Chief
"Analysis: A Soldier's Soldier, Not a Political General"
Pakistan Ruler Seen as 'Secular-Minded' Muslim
June 20, 2001
Following the pattern of three of Pakistan's military rulers over the last 50 years, Gen. Musharraf appoints himself president and formal head of state.
Autumn 2001
After Sept. 11, 2001, Gen. Musharraf becomes one of Washington's most crucial allies in the campaign against terror, allowing the U.S. to work with Pakistani intelligence to arrest senior al Qaeda operatives inside Pakistan and granting permission to strike at al Qaeda targets in his nation's lawless tribal areas.
Pakistani Defends Joining With the U.S.
Musharraf, the Indispensable Ally, Grows More Confident
Pakistani Leader Seeks 'Gestures' for Backing U.S
Jan. 12, 2002
In a speech, Gen. Musharraf pledges that his country will not be used as a base for terrorism of any kind and announces a broad ban on militant groups accused of fomenting violence in Indian-held Kashmir, as well as at home.
Related Article
Text of the Speech
Apr. 5, 2002
Asserting that "I am not power hungry," President Pervez Musharraf announces that he will hold a referendum that would allow him to stay in power after Pakistan elects a new civilian Parliament.
Related Article
Aug. 22, 2002
Gen. Musharraf unilaterally redraws Pakistan's Constitution, imposing 29 amendments that expand his control of the country.
Related Article
Dec. 25, 2003
Gen. Musharraf escapes an assassination attempt, the second in 11 days, when two suicide bombers plow their vehicles into his motorcade and detonate car bombs in Rawalpindi.
Related Article
Mar. 2007
Facing elections in a few months time, Mr. Musharraf fires the Chief Justice, Mohammad Iftikhar Chaudhry, apparently out of fear that the judiciary might undermine his re-election. A tidal wave of support for Mr. Chaudhry from lawyers across the country turns into a vibrant anti-Musharraf campaign.
Suspension of Jurist Unleashes Furor Against Musharraf
Pakistan’s Suspended Justice Tells of Facing Down Musharraf
Musharraf Loses Fight Over Suspension of Judge
Nov. 3, 2007
General Musharraf declares a state of emergency in what appears to be an effort to reassert his fading power in the face of growing opposition from the country’s Supreme Court, political parties and hard-line Islamists.
Related Article
Nov. 29, 2007
A day after resigning as army chief, Gen. Musharraf is sworn in as a civilian president, leaving him with vastly reduced powers.
Related Article
Dec. 27, 2007
Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani opposition leader and twice-serving prime minister, is assassinated.
Related Article
Times Topics: Benazir Bhutto
Timeline
Obituary
Feb. 18, 2008
Pakistanis deal a crushing defeat to President Musharraf in parliamentary elections, in what government and opposition politicians said is a firm rejection of his policies since 2001 and those of his close ally, the United States. Mr. Musharraf's party is routed, and a new government is formed by his enemies — Mr. Sharif and Ms. Bhutto's widower, Ali Asif Zardari.
Related Article
Slide Show
Times Topics: Pakistan Elections
Aug. 18, 2008
Under pressure over impending impeachment charges, President Musharraf announces he would resign
Source: NewYork Times

President Musharraf of Pakistan Resigns

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Under pressure over impending impeachment charges, President Pervez Musharraf announced he would resign Monday, ending nearly nine years as one of the United States’ most important allies in the campaign against terrorism.
Speaking on television from his presidential office here at 1 p.m., Mr. Musharraf, dressed in a gray suit and tie, said that after consulting with his aides, “I have decided to resign today.” He said he was putting national interest above “personal bravado.”
“Whether I win or lose the impeachment, the nation will lose,” he said, adding that he was not prepared to put the office of the presidency through the impeachment process.
Mr. Musharraf said the governing coalition, which has pushed for impeachment, had tried to “turn lies into truths.”
“They don’t realize they can succeed against me but the country will undergo irreparable damage.”
In an emotional ending to a speech lasting more than an hour, Mr. Musharraf raised his clenched fists to chest height, and said, “Long live Pakistan!”
His resignation came after 10 days of intense political maneuvering in Pakistan, and cleared the way for the four-month-old coalition government to choose a new president by a vote of the Parliament and provincial assemblies. But there were intense concerns in Washington that Mr. Musharraf’s departure would open a new era of instability in the nuclear-armed country of 165 million people, as the fragile coalition jockeys for his share of power.
Mr. Musharraf, 65, will stay in Pakistan in the immediate future, a request he had insisted on, according to Nasir Ali Khan, a senior member of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, a partner in the coalition. The coalition, led by Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, and Nawaz Sharif, the chairman of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, were scheduled to meet here in the capital Monday afternoon to discuss the way forward, Mr. Khan said.
There were few indications of who the next president would be. According to the Constitution, a new president must be chosen within 30 days. American officials have said that Mr. Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister who was assassinated in December, would like the post. But Mr. Sharif, who maintains a barely civil relationship with Mr. Zardari, is strongly opposed to the elevation of Mr. Zardari.
Mr. Musharraf has been under strong pressure in the past few days, as the coalition said it had completed a charge sheet to take to Parliament for his impeachment. The charges were centered on “gross violations” of the Constitution, according to the minister of information, Sherry Rehman.
The rhetoric from the coalition mounted over the weekend, but the leading politicians wavered on an exact date for bringing the charges, thus leaving a window for Mr. Musharraf to leave.
In his speech, Mr. Musharraf tore into the coalition for what he called their failed economic policies. He said Pakistan’s critical economic situation — a declining currency, capital flight, soaring inflation — was their responsibility. In contrast, he said, his policies had brought prosperity out of near economic collapse when he took charge in 1999.
He then gave a laundry list of his achievements, ranging from expanded road networks to a national art gallery in the capital. Although Pakistan’s literacy rate hovers around 50 percent, and is much lower among women, he took credit for new schools.
The army, the most powerful institution in Pakistan, stayed publicly above the fray in the past 10 days. But in remaining studiously neutral and declining to come to Mr. Musharraf’s rescue, the new leader of the army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvaz Kayani, tipped the scales against the president, politicians said.
Mr. Musharraf grabbed power in a bloodless coup in October 1999, ousting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the man who had picked Mr. Musharraf as army chief. For eight years, he ruled as head of the army and president, positions that gave him almost unfettered power and allowed the Bush administration to rely on Mr. Musharraf in the campaign on terrorism.
Lou Fintor, the spokesman at the United States Embassy in Islamabad, declined to comment on the announced resignation.
Across the border in Afghanistan, government officials expressed satisfaction that Mr. Musharraf was leaving. The relationship between the neighboring countries has long been tense, with Afghan officials blaming increasing violence there on Pakistan’s failure to crack down on militants in the border region.
An Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman, Zemeri Bashary, said on Monday that Mr. Musharraf had been an ally of the United States “in words only, not by actions” and argued that his rule had not been good for Afghanistan, The Associated Press reported. Also, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Sultan Ahmed Baheen, said Afghanistan hoped the resignation would strengthen democracy in both countries, the A.P. said.
As Mr. Musharraf began to lose popularity last year, Washington tried to forge a power-sharing relationship between him and Ms. Bhutto, who had been in exile since the late 1990s and returned to Pakistan last fall. She was assassinated Dec. 27.
The Musharraf government accused the Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud of her murder. By then Mr. Sharif had also returned from exile to run in elections. The Pakistan Peoples Party of Ms. Bhutto, under the stewardship of her husband, Mr. Zardari, and the Pakistan Muslim League-N, under Mr. Sharif, swept into power in elections in February.
Mr. Musharraf leaves office as the Taliban insurgency in the tribal areas has taken on renewed vigor in the past week, prompting civilians to leave their homes there, and pitting the paramilitary Frontier Corps, directed by the army, directly against the insurgents. (The Newyork Times)

Musharraf 'ready to go with dignity'

Islamabad: President Pervez Musharraf, threatened by possible impeachment, is reconciled to stepping down before he is hounded out of office, according to a senior adviser to the new government.
Musharraf, who came to power as a general after a coup in 1999, has probably got a matter of weeks, at most a few months, before the curtain falls, political insiders say.
"He is prepared to go and go with dignity," said the source close to the leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), which heads the two-month-old coalition government.
"We will try to make it very dignified," the PPP source said, adding it was politically difficult to be seen helping the disliked president as such a stance risked losing popular support.
The United States has good communications with Musharraf's successor as army chief, General Ashfaq Kiyani.
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Foreign allies, including the United States, are pressing for a transition to civilian-led democracy which avoids further upheaval in the country.
In the post-Musharraf era, the country faces challenges beyond the constant threat from Islamist militants linked to the Al Qaida and the Taliban.
Package
PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari, the widower and political successor of the late Benazir Bhutto, has proposed a constitutional package that would strip Musharraf of power, but possibly afford him legal protection from foes who want to see him humiliated.
The PPP hopes to buy time to settle terms for the president's departure and steal the thunder from coalition partner Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister Musharraf overthrew. Sharif wants his usurper impeached or tried for treason.
Officials say Musharraf wants indemnity for his actions of November 3, 2007, when he suspended the constitution and imposed emergency rule to purge the judiciary before it could rule illegal his re-election the previous month while still army chief.
Mass protest
Some segments of the media have intensified calls for Musharraf to resign, and a lawyers movement that sprang up last year in defence of the judiciary plans a mass protest on June 10, the same day the government is due to present its budget.
Independent analyst Nasim Zehra saw few options left for Musharraf.
"I think he has no cards left," she said. "General Musharraf may be compelled to think of resigning sooner rather than later."
A general election on February 18 swept away Musharraf's parliamentary support and resulted in an uneasy alliance between Zardari and Sharif.(Gulf news)

Father of Pakistan bomb denies passing on secrets

By Saeed Shah in Islamabad
The founder of Pakistan's nuclear bomb is bristling with indignation. After four years of enforced silence, the scientist described by the CIA as "at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden" and on a Time magazine cover as the "merchant of menace", is finally getting a chance to fight back.
The voice is a little faint but his mind is clearly still razor-sharp. Now aged 72 and suffering from prostate cancer, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, characterised as a Dr Strangelove figure by critics but regarded as a hero by most of his fellow Pakistanis, wants to set the record straight. A bookshelf-worth of titles have painted him as a greedy pedlar of nuclear technology to some of the world's most dangerous regimes.
"They [the allegations] are bullshit and concoctions," said Dr Khan from his villa in one of Islamabad's leafiest residential areas, where he remains under house arrest. "Now I have become the black sheep."
Dr Khan spearheaded Pakistan's clandestine nuclear programme from its inception in the mid-70s until he was forced to make a humiliating confession about his proliferation activities on national TV in 2004 under huge pressure from Washington.
In a telephone interview, Dr Khan said the confession had been made "in the national interest" but denied its contents were true. Mysteriously, he said that others "got away scot-free" as a result of him taking all the blame. Experts believe that he worked in collaboration with the Pakistan army.
Dr Khan stands accused of helping Iran, Libya and North Korea establish secret nuclear weapons programmes, a legacy the world community is still struggling to deal with today in the case of Iran and North Korea.
Dr Khan admitted helping Libya and Iran but insisted his aid was limited to pointing these countries in the direction of suppliers. He flatly denied providing any assistance to Pyongyang but said that Pakistan had acquired missile technology, for nuclear bombs, from North Korea.
He said he used companies he knew from his days working in the nuclear industry in Europe as suppliers when he shifted back to Pakistan. The businesses, based in Europe's most advanced economies – including the UK, Switzerland, Germany and Holland – provided the Pakistani programme with all it needed, he said. This was done openly in the 1970s; later the trade went underground, partly funnelled through subsidiaries of European companies operating from apartheid-era South Africa.
"When Iran and Libya wanted to do their programme, they asked our advice. We said 'okay, these are the suppliers, who provide all'. This was very small advice," said Dr Khan.
"I advised them. What's wrong with it? I became the 'ringleader' of the network. But the suppliers were there already for 20 years."
Dr Khan said he had been to North Korea twice and insisted that the reclusive communist state did not need any help from Pakistan, which has a nuclear programme based on uranium enrichment rather than the alternative plutonium technology.
"The North Korean programme is totally based on reactor reprocessing plutonium. They had mastered this technology even before we started."
According to other accounts, North Korea later sought to also acquire uranium technology by swapping its missile systems for Pakistan's know-how. A recent book even claims that the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was involved in the barter arrangement during a trip to Pyongyang.
Dr Khan's protestations of innocence do not impress Western experts, however. David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector, who now heads the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, said: "He's just lying, the facts are established."
In the last couple of weeks, the conditions of Dr Khan's detention have been relaxed – with unofficial phone contact tolerated, a few visitors allowed and one brief outing. Some members of the new coalition government have even called for him to be freed.
Dr Khan himself is in no doubt why he and Pakistan have been singled out for international condemnation.
"Muslims were the only religion which threatened the Western civilisation. They hate Muslims, they hate Islamic culture. Every Muslim is a terrorist.
"The West will never forgive you. I broke their monopoly. I am the black sheep for them."
Pakistan and the bomb
In May 1998, Pakistan and India shocked the world by carrying out a series of tit- for-tat nuclear tests, raising the spectre of nuclear conflict between the two neighbours. Pakistan is thought to have produced enough highly enriched uranium fuel for up to 55 weapons, although it claims the weapons are not assembled. In addition to uranium enrichment at the AQ Khan Kahuta facility, Pakistan also developed plutonium production at the Khusabresearch reactor withChinese assistance atJoharabad in the 1990s. According to commercial satellite imagery, Pakistan appears to be building a third production reactor at the site. Experts say it could be intended to improve the quality of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal and build a new generation of more powerful weapons. Pakistan is estimated to have produced a small amount of weapons-grade plutonium for up to five nuclear weapons. (The Independent)

Benazir Bhutto 'gave' North Korea nuclear data

June 04, 2008
WASHINGTON: Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, on a state visit to North Korea in 1993, smuggled in critical data on uranium enrichment - a route to making a nuclear weapon - to help facilitate a missile deal with Pyongyang, according to a new book by a journalist who knew the slain politician well.The assertion, reported in The Washington Post, is based on conversations author Shyam Bhatia had with Bhutto in 2003, in which she said she would tell him a secret "so significant that I had to promise never to reveal it, at least not during her lifetime", Bhatia writes in Goodbye, Shahzadi.
Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan in December.
A spokesman for the Pakistani embassy in Washington denounced Bhatia's account as "an absurd and baseless claim".
Bhatia said he first met Bhutto at Oxford University in 1974 and kept contact with her until just before her death. (The Australian)

Militants blow up video, music market

MILITANTS blew up two dozen video and music stalls today in a Pakistani region on the Afghan border where supporters of al-Qaeda and the Taliban have tried to enforce strict Muslim rule, witnesses said.
No one was hurt in the attack on the market in the northwestern town of Miranshah in the North Waziristan region, part of an ethnic Pashtun tribal belt in northwest Pakistan that has never come under the control of any government.
"About 25 masked militants came at about 1:30am (3.30pm AEST yesterday) planted explosives and blew up the entire market," said Mohammad Sakhi, who runs a workshop next to the market.
The stalls offered pirated Indian and Hollywood films as well as music discs of Pashtun folk music. Some kept more racy movies under the counter, a resident said.
There have been numerous attacks on video and music shops in remote northwestern border regions by Islamists who see all music, film and television as unIslamic.
But the attacks have spread to towns in North West Frontier Province in a process referred to as Talibanisation.
Last year, hardline religious students from a radical mosque even tried to press video shops to close in the capital, Islamabad.
Authorities have largely turned a blind eye to the attacks on markets, and similar attacks on girls' schools, to the dismay of the moderate majority of Pakistanis.
"I've lost everything. This was my only source of earning for my family," said Ahmed Gul, whose shop was destroyed in the blast.
A new Government has begun negotiations with the aim of bringing an end to militant violence that has killed hundreds of people since the middle of last year.
But analysts say peace pacts are unlikely to stop the militants' efforts to impose their austere version of Islam. (The australian)

Pakistan dampens Musharraf resignation rumour

ISLAMABAD - The Pakistani army and President Pervez Musharraf's spokesman moved to dampen speculation on Thursday that the beleaguered president was about to quit.
Rumours that U.S. ally Musharraf was close to resigning were one of the reasons for falls of more than 4 percent on the Karachi stock market on both Wednesday and Thursday.
Ever since a February general election robbed him of parliamentary support, speculation has abounded that the unpopular president, who came to power as a general in a 1999 coup, would be driven from office.
A front page story in the News newspaper on Thursday focused on a late-night meeting between the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, and Musharraf.
The military issued a statement saying Kayani 'regretted that a section of press is trying to unnecessarily sensationalise routine functional matters'.
A spokesman for Musharraf rebutted the newspaper article's assertion that Musharraf had agreed to leave his official residence in Rawalpindi.
'Neither has there been any discussion of the president moving out of the President's Lodge, nor is there any plan for him to do so,' said Rashid Qureshi.
Formerly known as Army House, the Rawalpindi residence was renamed the President's Lodge after Musharraf quit as army chief last November and opted to continue living there for security reasons.
Another close aide to Musharraf said any suggestion that the army had asked him to step down was 'totally wrong'.
Despite pressure from several sides to quit, Musharraf has sat tight and watched cracks develop in the new coalition over how to tackle him.
The Pakistan People's Party (PPP), leading the two-month-old government, has drafted a 62-point constitutional amendment that will reduce the president to a figurehead.
The constitutional package will take many months to debate, but it could persuade Musharraf to leave gracefully in the meantime, according to a senior PPP official.
Coalition partner Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister Musharraf overthrew, is impatient to see his usurper hounded out of office.
Sharif aims to contest a by-election next month for a seat in the National Assembly, having been barred from contesting the February election.
At a meeting of his party in Lahore to mark the 10th anniversary of Pakistan's nuclear tests on Wednesday, Sharif said Musharraf should be tried as a 'traitor'.
Political analysts say that while the army has taken a more constitutional role since the election, its top brass would be unlikely to stomach the humiliation of a former chief.
The army has ruled Pakistan for more than half the country's history since it was carved out of British-ruled India in 1947. (Khaleej Times)