Chechens killed in Quetta were unarmed: witnesses

QUETTA: While police and other law enforcement agencies’ investigators are silent about the killing on Tuesday of five Chechen suspects, witnesses say they were unarmed, had not put up any resistance and appeared ready to surrender.
A wounded woman attacker raises her hand next to a security checkpost during exchange of fire with Pakistani troops in Quetta on May 17, 2011.


Hospital sources said on Wednesday that the three women and two men had died on the spot of multiple bullet wounds.
All the bodies were found at a picket of the Frontier Corps surrounded by barbed wires.
According to officials who tried to reconstruct the scene, the suspects had gone to the checkpoint for shelter or to surrender
when they saw a heavy contingent of law enforcement personnel who had rushed to Killi Khezi after receiving a wireless message from a police post on the Airport Road about the entry into the area of a vehicle carrying suspected foreigners.
According to sources, they had hired the vehicle in Kuchlak, for coming to Quetta with the help of two local people.
They had crossed two police posts, but policemen deployed at the third one told them to accompany them to the police station near the airport.

While on way to the police station, the local men and the driver forcibly offloaded a policeman accompanying them and sped away. After some time, the driver, Ataullah, stopped the vehicle and refused to take them to Quetta.
The Chechens stepped off the vehicle, offered prayers in a mosque in Killi Khezi and asked local people to guide them to an address.
But all of a sudden they found themselves surrounded by police and Frontier Corps personnel.
The frightened Chechens moved to the nearby FC post, apparently to surrender or take refuge.
“They raised their hands as a gesture of surrender but law enforcement personnel opened indiscriminate fire at them,” witness Irfan Khan alleged.
A private TV channel telecast the shooting by security personnel and an injured woman waving her hand and pleading with them to stop firing.
“An investigation is under way on the basis of information being collected from some mobile phones and a diary,” Quetta police chief Daud Junejo told Dawn on Wednesday night.
He insisted that the Chechens were armed and had hurled a grenade at the checkpost.
However, no other official of the security agencies involved in the firing was ready to comment on the incident.
People who witnessed the action of law enforcement personnel expressed doubts about the official claims, saying that no
suicide vests, grenades or weapons were found from the bodies.
“I did not see any suicide jacket or bomb strapped to the bodies,” a senior journalist who was at the place when the incident took place told Dawn.
A senior police officer who had searched the bodies also said not even a knife had been found.
“Only five passports were found in their pockets,” he added.
The statements of police and FC officials were contradictory, too.
Police said the Chechens were carrying suicide jackets, while FC officials claimed that they had grenades in their hands.
Another question being raised here is why the suspects were not arrested when they were injured.
“They could have been arrested alive because they were unarmed,” an officer of a law enforcement agency said.
He said the suspects could have provided useful information.
The officer said he believed that security personnel opened fire out of a fear that the suspects might have been wearing suicide vests.
The bodies were lying in the morgue of the Bolan Medical Complex after postmortem.
Sources said the Chechens had not crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan in the recent past and it appeared that they had come to Kuchlak from North Waziristan.
Their passports had expired two years ago, an official said.
Amanullah Kasi adds: The Balochistan National Party-M, Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, both factions of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam and Jamaat-i-Islami have called for an impartial investigation into the incident.Leaders of the parties said there were contradictions in the statements of security forces. They claimed that they had information about the arrival of terrorists intending to carry out suicide attacks, but failed to explain how the suspects had managed to reach Kuchlak, near the provincial capital.
The leaders said all vehicles were searched at the Baleli checkpoint by FC, police and Levies personnel, but the Chechens appeared to have dodged them.
They said that if the security forces’ version of the incident had been correct, the suicide vests would have blown up when police and FC personnel opened fire on the ‘terrorists’.

Asma criticises court verdict on PCO judges

HYDERABAD: Asma Jehangir, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, has criticised the Supreme Court`s verdict in the PCO judges case.

Addressing members of the Sindh High Court Bar Association and Hyderabad District Bar Association here on Wednesday, she said: “Police use third degree treatment but some people are doing it in the judiciary with their pen. This pen embodies the trust of the nation and it should not be used for settling personal scores and rivalries.”
Ms Jehangir was commenting on the verdict which the Supreme Court had announced earlier in the day, rejecting intra-court appeals of judges who had taken oath under the Provisional Constitution Order and asking the government to issue a notification of their dismissal.
“I don`t want to see justice stifled. Although he was a PCO judge, yet we supported the chief justice when he was sacked. We believed that if a dictator was allowed to ride roughshod over the judiciary this time, he would just bury the institution the next time,” she said.
Ms Jehangir said that decisions based on a feudal and `panchayati` mindset would not work any more.
She said she wanted to reform bar councils and associations. There was no legal aid system which was primarily the bar`s responsibility, adding that amendments to the registration act and defender`s law were needed.

Referring to a demand for appointment of judges from Sindh, she said sarcastically: “You are not being inducted as judges because you have talent.”
She said a strategy of `jalao` and `gherao` appeared to be working for induction of judges. “We have to reform this institution,” she added.
The SCBA chief acknowledged the leadership qualities of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and admitted that he was receptive to her criticism.
However, she said, she had reservations on some matters pertaining to case management that had badly affected lawyers in the apex court. “They don`t get the cause list until Friday.”
Lawyers of Karachi pass on cases to their colleagues in Islamabad because they cannot shunt between the two cities. “Lawyers are told at 4pm that the board is discharged,” she said.
She said senior lawyers complained that the situation was affecting their health and people had to wait for so long for interim relief that it became ineffective.
Ms Jehangir alleged that judges were interested in `big cases` that led to a `mela` in courtroom. “We are not interested in fanfare. Lawyers have to take care of their clients, practice and offices.”

She said she had refused to recommend lawyers for appointment as judges, adding that it was the judges` responsibility to find candidates and evaluate their ability because lawyers appeared in cases before them.
She regretted that those who were deemed to be having integrity and ability during the lawyers` movement were now being treated as incompetent and dishonest.
She said courts in Malakand were not being made functional for want of judges. “The judiciary will have to find judges among ourselves. There is no other way out.”
The SCBA chief said she had received messages from under-trial prisoners entreating her to do something to get judges posted in courts so that their appeals could be heard.
She said she wanted to know the formula for elevation of judges. “In the SHC (Sindh High Court), a woman and a minority community judge were shown the door on flimsy grounds,” she alleged. “The woman was relieved on a complaint by her stenographer.”
She called for making the judiciary representative of different ideologies.
Ms Jehangir was also critical of disposal of complicated constitutional petitions through short orders.

She said that she had not spoken in defence of those who had been recommended by the judicial commission because they had not been selected on merit. But the court allowed a constitutional petition relating to the appointments with a short order, for reasons to be recorded later, she said. “How can you assume the authority of parliament and dispose of the matter with a one-liner?” Judgments should have detailed reasons, she stressed.
Ms Jehangir expressed disapproval of the recent in-camera briefing to parliament on the killing of Osama bin Laden and said she could bet that the resolution adopted by the parliament would never be implemented.

Ms Jehangir also participated in a procession organised by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, visited the Mirpurkhas and Nawabshah district bars and offered condolences to the family of slain lawyer leader Ali Mohammad Dahiri in Nawabshah.

Al Qaeda releases posthumous bin Laden audio recording

CAIRO: Al Qaeda released a posthumous audio recording by Osama bin Laden in which the group’s ex-leader praised revolutions sweeping the Arab world, and called for more “tyrants” to be toppled.
Bin Laden backed the uprisings which began in Tunisia and have spread across much of North Africa and the Middle East. 


Extremists have often been conspicuous by their absence in the uprisings largely led by ordinary citizens angered by autocratic rule, corruption and economic mismanagement.
But bin Laden, who was killed in a US raid on May 2 in Pakistan, backed the uprisings which began in Tunisia and have spread across much of North Africa and the Middle East.
Al Qaeda had said bin Laden, who masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, recorded a message a week before his death. The audio was included in an Internet video lasting more than 12 minutes and posted on extremist websites.
In the audio, a voice which appears to be bin Laden’s referred to the uprisings which began in the Maghreb region of North Africa.
“The sun of the revolution has risen from the Maghreb. The light of the revolution came from Tunisia. It has given the nation tranquility and made the faces of the people happy.”
Tunisia’s president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was overthrown in January, followed by Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak after mass protests centred on Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
Bin Laden backed efforts to topple more leaders in the Muslim world, calling on al Qaeda supporters to “set up an operations room that follows up events and works in parallel to save the people that are struggling to bring down their tyrants”.
“Tunisia was the first but swiftly the knights of Egypt have taken a spark from the free people of Tunisia to Tahrir Square,” said bin Laden, adding: “It has made the rulers worried.”

Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigns as IMF chief

NEW YORK: The International Monetary Fund said Dominique Strauss-Kahn has resigned as its head following charges against him of sexual assault and attempted rape.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, is arraigned at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, on charges he sexually assaulted a hotel maid
“I deny with the greatest possible firmness all of the allegations that have been made against me,” Strauss-Kahn said in his letter of resignation, which was released by the IMF and dated May 18.
“I want to devote all my strength, all my time, and all my energy to proving my innocence.”
He will on Thursday for a second time request release on $1 million cash bail and placement under 24-hour house arrest while he awaits trial on charges of attempting to rape a hotel maid, his lawyers said. He is being held in New York’s notorious Rikers Island jail. “Yes there will definitely be a bail hearing tomorrow,” Manhattan District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Erin Duggan told Reuters on Wednesday.
A mug shot of Strauss-Kahn, 62, taken more than 24 hours after he was pulled from a plane and detained on Saturday, showed him exhausted, his eyes downcast and half-closed and wearing a rumpled, open-neck shirt.
The photograph may fuel outrage in France over how a man who had been viewed as a strong contender for the French presidency has been paraded before the cameras before he has had a chance to defend himself in court.
Polls released in France on Wednesday showed 57 per cent of respondents thought the Socialist politician was definitely or probably the victim of a plot.
The woman Strauss-Kahn allegedly tried to rape, a 32-year-old widow from West Africa, testified on Wednesday before a grand jury. It will decide in secret whether there is enough evidence to formally press charges with an indictment.
“The proceedings are ongoing,” her lawyer, Jeffrey Shapiro, said.
Strauss-Kahn’s arrest has dashed his prospects to run for the French presidency in 2012 and raised broader issues over the future of the International Monetary Fund.
Developing countries are questioning Europe’s hold on the top IMF position, and jockeying to replace him has already begun.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Europe would naturally put forward a candidate to replace Strauss-Kahn if he were to step down.
Germany, which wants a European to keep the job, said the IMF should deal with its immediate leadership internally and that it is too early to discuss a successor to Strauss-Kahn.
French officials said John Lipsky, the IMF’s American number two official whose term ends in August, would represent the Fund at next week’s Group of Eight summit in France.
In Strauss-Kahn’s absence, Lipsky is temporarily in charge of the IMF, which manages the world economy and is in the midst of helping euro zone states like Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

US assured of action against ‘sanctuaries’

ISLAMABAD: A flurry of activity of Monday provided hope that the Pak-US marriage of convenience was not over despite the recent bellowing and booming of the Pakistani leadership.
In this photo released by Pakistan Press Information department, Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari, third from left meets with US Senator John Kerry, second from left and US ambassador in Pakistan Cameron Munter, left, at President House in Islamabad, Pakistan on Monday, May 16, 2011. Kerry says he and Pakistani leaders have agreed to a "series of steps" to improve their nations' fraying ties. Kerry was in Pakistan on Monday amid high tensions over the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in the South Asian country's northwest.


By the end of Senator John Kerry’s day-long stay in Islamabad it appeared that the US had convinced Pakistan to undertake several steps for proving its commitment to the fight against terrorism. These included returning the wreckage of the helicopter which had malfunctioned during the May 2 raid in Abbotabad and eliminating terrorist sanctuaries in tribal areas.
In exchange Washington has committed itself to a process, which if successful, will lead to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Islamabad for reviving the strategic dialogue which has been stalled since the arrest of CIA operative Raymond Davis and subsequent events such as drone attacks and the unilateral US operation killing Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden.
John Kerry, who heads the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, extracted these promises from the Pakistani leadership; he warned them that “if the relationship is to fall apart …. US will always reserve the right to protect its national security”.
Senator Kerry’s tough love message was reinforced, Dawn has learnt, by the telephone calls Secretary Clinton made to President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
Ms Clinton rang up Mr Gilani when he, the president and Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani were meeting Senator Kerry. The call is reported to have lasted about 20 minutes.
The secretary of state had called Mr Zardari on Sunday.
“I think we made serious progress. Pakistan has agreed to do a number of things immediately to demonstrate its further seriousness of purpose and we agreed to have several officials from the US to come here in the middle of the week or sometime soon to carry on this discussion and prepare the ground for Secretary Clinton,” a visibly fatigued Kerry told a selected group of journalists after his meetings with Pakistani civil and military leaders.

Having met the army chief on Sunday night, Mr Kerry spent most of Monday in meetings. As he noted: “We worked harder today to talk about ways in which we can be better partners, work cooperatively and open doors to joint cooperation to fight terrorism.”
Senator Kerry met President Zardari, Prime Minister Gilani and Army Chief Gen Kayani, individually and collectively, before a joint declaration was issued by the two sides expressing the willingness to carry on with their relationship.
“In furtherance of its existing commitment to fight terrorism, Pakistan has agreed to take several immediate steps to underscore its seriousness in renewing the full cooperative effort with the United States,” the joint communiqué said.
Senator Kerry avoided divulging details of the steps agreed upon, but vaguely described it as including cooperation on counter-terrorism, intelligence sharing and targeting terrorist sanctuaries. The latter is hardly surprising; having been high on the American wish list for a long time, action against the havens in tribal areas was one of the major demands Mr Kerry brought to Islamabad.
He said: “We need Pakistan’s cooperation, we need Pakistan’s help against sanctuaries in this country from where people are destabilising Afghanistan and frankly killing … all of (those who) are trying to provide for a stable Afghanistan.”

However, he stopped of claiming that Pakistani leaders had agreed to go after the Haqqani network, one of the core contentious issues in the rocky bilateral ties. He was only willing to say cryptically that both countries had agreed to target “some entity, which is engaged in terrorism … the entity that needs to be taken on one way or the other”.
He also said that other measures to be taken by Pakistan included returning the tail of the helicopter which was left behind by the Navy Seals during the Abbotabad raid.
After it malfunctioned, the Americans exploded the helicopter before they left; this was done, it was reported, to prevent the stealth technology from falling into Pakistani, and possibly other, hands.
However, distrust is still not a thing of the past. Despite Pakistan’s new commitments, which Mr Kerry himself described as “more detailed, more precise and clarified”, he made it clear that Washington was no longer going to be satisfied by mere promises.
“This road ahead will not be defined by words. It will be defined by actions,” he told journalists.
This is why Washington is going to follow a step-by-step approach before confirming that Secretary Clinton will be taking a flight to Islamabad.
Two US officials — Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman and CIA Deputy Director Mark Morrel — will visit Islamabad to follow up on Mr Kerry’s talks and discuss the agreed measures in details and possibly gauge progress on the commitments made to the senator.
Secretary Clinton’s visit remains contingent on the outcome of Grossman’s discussions. “First a meeting will take place to try to lay the groundwork for that (Clinton’s meeting) and coming out of that meeting the secretary would set the date,” Senator Kerry said. However, in the midst of all the tough talk and the conditions he set, Mr Kerry also made an effort to soothe ruffled feathers, “we are committed to working together with Pakistan — not unilaterally, but together in joint efforts” — contingent once again on Pakistani cooperation.
“But, if we are cooperating and working together there is no reason (for acting unilaterally),” he said.

Israel-Palestinian violence erupts on three borders

JERUSALEM: Israeli troops shot Palestinian protesters who surged towards its frontiers with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza on Sunday, killing at least 13 people on the day Palestinians mourn the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Policemen detain a Palestinian refugee during a demonstration in Karama, west of the Jordanian capital Amman and near the Jordanian-Israeli border.


In the deadliest such confrontation in years of anniversary clashes usually confined to the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli forces opened fire in three separate border locations to prevent crowds of demonstrators from crossing frontier lines.
The new challenge to Israel came from the borders of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Gaza — all home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were driven out in 1948.
Combined with a public relations disaster last year over the killing of pro-Palestinian activists in a Gaza aid flotilla and a determined Palestinian diplomatic drive to win UN recognition of statehood in September this year, the bloody border protests raised the stakes further for Israel.
Israel’s leaders condemned the incidents as provocations inspired by Iran, to exploit Palestinian nationalist feeling fuelled by the popular revolts of the “Arab Spring”, and to draw attention from major internal unrest in Syria, Iran’s ally.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped the confrontations would not escalate.
“We hope the calm and quiet will quickly return. But let nobody be misled: we are determined to defend our borders and sovereignty,” Netanyahu said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah movement holds sway in the Israeli occupied West Bank and is ready to negotiate peace with Israel, said in a televised address that those killed were martyrs to the Palestinian cause.
“Their precious blood will not be wasted. It was spilt for the sake of our nation’s freedom,” Abbas said.
Hamas Praises Clashes
But extremist Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and which last month sealed a surprise reconciliation pact with its bitter rival Fatah, issued a warning that Palestinians would accept nothing less than return to all lands lost in 1948.
Spokesman Taher Al-Nono praised the “crowds we have seen in Palestine, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon” as evidence of “imminent victory and return to the original homes as promised by God”.
In an apparent contradiction of suggestions that Hamas might ditch its rejection of Israel’s right to exist, he said there was no alternative to recovering all land lost in 1948.
Israeli security forces had been on alert for violence on Sunday, the day Palestinians mourn the “Nakba”, or catastrophe, of Israel’s founding in a 1948 war, when hundreds of thousands of their brethren fled or were forced to leave their homes.
A call had gone out on Facebook urging Palestinians to demonstrate on Israel’s borders.
Lebanon’s army said 10 Palestinians died as Israeli forces shot at rock-throwing protesters to prevent them from entering the Jewish State from Lebanese territory.
They said 112 people had been wounded in the shooting incident in the Lebanese border village of Maroun al-Ras.
“The protesters overcame the Lebanese army and marched towards the security fence and started throwing stones,” Reuters cameraman Ezzat Baltaji said, from Maroun al-Ras village.
Syrian media reports said Israeli gunfire killed two people after dozens of Palestinians infiltrated the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria, along a front line that has been largely tranquil for decades.
Syria condemned Israel’s “criminal activities”.
“This appears to be a cynical and transparent act by the Syrian leadership to deliberately create a crisis on the border so as to distract attention from the very real problems that regime is facing at home,” said a senior Israeli government official, who declined to be named.
“Syria is a police state. People don’t randomly approach the border without the approval of the regime.”
On Sunday, hundreds of protesters flooded the lush green valley that marks the border area, waving Palestinian flags.
Israeli troops attempted to mend the breached fence, firing at what the army described as infiltrators.
“We are seeing here an Iranian provocation, on both the Syrian and the Lebanese frontiers, to try to exploit the Nakba day commemorations,” said the army’s chief spokesman, Brigadier-General Yoav Mordechai.
Syria is home to 470,000 Palestinian refugees and its leadership, now facing fierce internal unrest, had in previous years prevented protesters from reaching the frontier area.
To the southeast, on Jordan’s desert border with Israel, Jordanian police fired teargas to disperse hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists gathered at a border village.
Israeli forces did not fire over the Jordanian border.
On Israel’s tense border with Gaza, Israeli gunfire wounded 82 demonstrators nearing the fence, medics said. Israeli forces said they shot a man trying to plant a bomb near the border.
In Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial hub, a truck driven by an Arab Israeli slammed into vehicles and pedestrians, killing one man and injuring 17 people.

IMF chief vows to fight charges

NEW YORK: IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn vowed Sunday to fight charges of assaulting a hotel chambermaid, amid an explosive sex scandalwhich could bury his dreams of becoming the next French president.
A handcuffed IMF chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, facing charges he sexually assaulted a hotel maid, is escorted from a New York Police Department unit.


The veteran French politician, who was arrested over the weekend after a New York chambermaid accused him of sexual assault, would defend himself against the allegations, lawyer Benjamin Brafman told reporters.
“He intends to vigorously defend these charges and denies any wrongdoing,” Brafman said outside the courthouse where the IMF chief will appear on Monday.
Strauss-Kahn left a police station in Harlem late Sunday in handcuffs.
The bombshell news of his arrest has left the International Monetary Fund reeling, coming ahead of critical talks on repairing the painful fallout of the debt crisis sweeping the euro zone.
Strauss-Kahn, 62, has hired a barrage of top lawyers, as questions also swirled over whether he had the right to diplomatic immunity.
Another lawyer William Taylor told journalists outside the Manhattan court house that “we’ve agreed to postpone the arraignment until tomorrow (Monday) morning.”
Taylor said the delay was linked to Strauss-Kahn undergoing further testing by police searching for evidence.
“Our client willingly consented to a scientific and forensic examination,” Taylor said, adding the IMF chief was “tired but he’s fine.” Strauss-Kahn was yanked off an Air France flight on Saturday just minutes before take-off in a humiliating turn of events for one of the world’s most powerful men.
A former French finance minister, he had been expected to throw his hat into the ring for the 2012 French election, challenging President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Strauss-Kahn has been charged with a “criminal sexual act, unlawful imprisonment, and attempted rape” of a 32-year-old woman.
The woman, employed for the past three years at the luxury Sofitel hotel near Times Square, picked Strauss-Kahn out of a line-up Sunday, as police said they had won a warrant to seek DNA evidence on his clothes.
The woman alleged he had assaulted her in his suite when he got out of his shower naked.
“She was in the room. She thought it was empty. That’s when he approached her from behind and touched her inappropriately. He forced her to perform a sexual act on him,” a police spokesman told AFP.
He described the victim as “female, black, 32 years old,” but could not confirm details given in the New York Times that the IMF chief pulled her into the bedroom and onto the bed and then locked the door.
She managed to fight him off, but he dragged her down the hallway to the bathroom, where he sexually assaulted her a second time, the daily said.
MSNBC television said that in the bathroom, Strauss-Kahn forced the maid to perform oral sex on him and tried to remove her underwear.
Strauss-Kahn’s wife, high-profile French television journalist Anne Sinclair, said however she did not believe the allegations against her husband, telling AFP: “I have no doubt his innocence will be established.”
Strauss-Kahn, who has been widely praised for his stewardship of the IMF, is so well known in France he is often referred to simply by his initials DSK.
Even though he has not yet officially declared his candidacy in next year’s French president elections, he had been topping the opinion polls.
News of his arrest threw the Socialist party into disarray, and could prove a boost for Sarkozy and his rightwing UMP which is also facing a challenge from the far-right National Front and its leader Marine Le Pen.
Conspiracy theories immediately began circulating in France speculating that the events were just an elaborate set-up to discredit Strauss-Kahn.
Police confirmed the IMF boss had been tracked down to the Air France flight when he contacted the Sofitel to ask staff to return his mobile phone which he had left behind in his room.
The arrest comes as the 187-member IMF is seeking to aid debt-ridden countries in the euro zone, and the executive board was now due to meet to discuss the crisis on Monday.
Strauss-Kahn, whose stint at the IMF does not officially end until September 2012, had been due to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Sunday to discuss an aid package for debt-laden Greece.
He was then to attend a meeting of EU finance ministers on Monday and Tuesday in Brussels. The IMF said his number two John Lipsky would stand in as acting IMF chief for now.
It is not the first time that Strauss-Kahn has been tainted by scandal.
In 2008, he was discovered to be having an affair with a Hungarian IMF economist, but the IMF concluded he had not exerted pressure on the woman, although it noted his inappropriate behavior.

Saudi diplomat shot dead in Karachi

KARACHI: A Saudi diplomat was shot dead in a drive-by shooting near the consulate in Karachi on Monday, the second attack on Saudi interests in Pakistan’s biggest city in less than a week, officials said.
The attack came days after unidentified attackers threw two hand grenades at the Saudi consulate in the city.
An official from the media section of the Saudi embassy identified the man as a Saudi diplomat. Another official from the embassy earlier identified him as a security official working for the consulate in Karachi.
Pakistani police in Karachi told AFP that the Saudi had been driving in a vehicle with diplomatic plates when two motorcycle riders opened fire at a crossroads in the city’s upmarket Defence neighbourhood.
“The consulate employee died of multiple bullet wounds on the spot,” said Fayaaz Leghari, the police chief of southern province Sindh, of which Karachi is the capital.
“The attackers fled on the motorbike,” he added.
Provincial home ministry official Sharfuddin Memon identified the dead man as a junior officer at the consulate.
“We are investigating if it was linked to the Abbottabad operation or was an isolated incident,” he said in reference to the killing by US Navy SEALs of the Saudi-born al-Qaeda mastermind in the garrison city of Abbottabad on May 2.
Last Wednesday, drive-by assailants threw two grenades at the consulate in Karachi in what officials said could have been reaction to bin Laden’s death.

Bin Laden raid ‘not an assassination’: US attorney general

LONDON: The US commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden was “not an assassination”, US Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday after the al Qaeda leader’s sons denounced the operation.
Holder told the BBC the raid on bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan on May 2 was a “kill or capture mission” and that his surrender would have been accepted if offered, but that the safety of US Navy commandos was paramount.
“What happened to bin Laden was not an assassination,” Holder said.
“I think the action that we took against him can be seen as an act of national self-defence. You have to remember it is lawful to target an enemy commander,” he said.
The top US legal official said there was no indication that bin Laden was going to surrender and it was believed he could be wearing a suicide vest.
“It was a kill or capture mission. If there was a possibility of a feasible surrender that would have occurred, but their protection, that is the protection of the force that went into the compound, was uppermost in their minds,” said Holder.
“This is a man who swore he would never be taken alive. There were some indications that perhaps he wore a suicide vest, there’s indications that perhaps there were weapons in the room.” Bin Laden’s body was buried at sea hours after the operation in which US special forces in helicopters flew under Pakistani radar cover and raided a house in the northwestern garrison town of Abbottabad.
Bin Laden’s sons on Tuesday denounced his “arbitrary killing” and burial at sea.
In a statement given to the New York Times, the sons asked why their father “was not arrested and tried in a court of law so that the truth is revealed to the people of the world.”

US Senator Kerry to visit Pakistan next week

WASHINGTON: Senior US Senator John Kerry said Tuesday he would travel to Pakistan early next week to help get bilateral ties back “on the right track” amid angry tensions over the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
“A number of people suggested it would be good to get a dialogue going about the aftermath, and how we get on the right track,” said Kerry, who announced earlier this week that he would visit Afghanistan at the weekend.
Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been a steadfast champion of greater US engagement in Pakistan and argued that Washington and Islamabad need to work through current tensions fueled by the May 2 raid.
Asked whether he would press Pakistani leaders on whether officials there knew the Al-Qaeda chief was living a stone’s throw from an elite military academy for years, Kerry told reporters he would be discussing “all the relevant issues that are on the table, and there are a lot of them.” “We have a huge agenda, we have huge interests that are very important to try to be on track, right, and there’s a lot to discuss,” said the senator, whose visit would be the highest profile US stop in Pakistan since bin Laden’s death.
“There are some serious questions, obviously, there are some serious issues that we’ve just got to find a way to resolve together. And our interests and their interests I think are well served by working through those difficulties,” he said.
Kerry’s travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan could be a prelude to a visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Obama committed in late 2010 to travel to Pakistan this year, but the tensions in the wake of the bin Laden raid have cast further doubt on such a visit, and no trip has yet been put on his schedule.
Kerry said he had discussed the situation with the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman, and President Barack Obama’s coordinator for Afghanistan and Pakistan policy, Douglas Lute, and planned to stop at the White House before his trip.
The senator said at a hearing Tuesday that bin Laden’s death was “a potentially game-changing opportunity to build momentum for a political solution in Afghanistan that could bring greater stability to the region and bring our troops home.” Senior US lawmakers have called for Pakistan to explain whether it was “incompetent or complicit” in bin Laden being able to live in relative luxury in the leafy city of Abbottabad 10 years after the September 11 terrorist strikes.
“I just don’t believe it was done without some form of complicity,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, said Monday in a stark and scathing warning to the US ally.
“I think either we’re going to be allies in fighting terror, or the relationship makes less and less sense to me,” said Feinstein, who indicated she foresaw cuts in billions in US aid absent a course correction in Islamabad.
“I think it’s important that we have a good relationship with Pakistan, but not at any price,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Democrat.
“I do trust them, but I think it’s a moment when we need to look each other in the eye and decide, are we real allies? Are we going to work together?” the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, said Tuesday.
“And if we are, you’re either all in or you’re not in,” Boehner told NBC television.
“Clearly there are questions that remain about what they knew or didn’t know about bin Laden being in their country. There are certainly some questions about their willingness to pursue some terrorists, but maybe not others,” he added.

Petraeus on bin Laden-Taliban link

KABUL: The killing of Osama bin Laden may weaken al Qaeda’s influence on the Afghan Taliban, the US military commander in Afghanistan said.
'The deal between the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda was between Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, not the organizations,'' Petraeus said as he visited US troops in eastern Afghanistan. 


Even so, Gen. David Petraeus warned Sunday that Afghanistan is still a potential refuge for international terror groups, and al Qaeda is just one of those. He also warned that the April 29 US raid that killed the al Qaeda leader in his Pakistani compound did not spell the end of the NATO battle in Afghanistan, which began just one month after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington with the aim of wiping out al Qaeda and bin Laden.
Nato officials have said that they do not intend to speed up their withdrawal just because al Qaeda’s leader is gone, but the military feels it may bring the Taliban closer to negotiations with the Afghan government.
Interviewed aboard his helicopter by The Associated Press, Petraeus said the strong link between al Qaeda and the Taliban was personal, not organizational.
”The deal between the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda was between Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, not the organizations,” Petraeus said as he visited US troops in eastern Afghanistan.
Petraeus said bin Laden’s death may make it easier for the Taliban to renounce al Qaeda, a condition for reconciliation talks set by Nato and the Afghan government.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Obama administration have said they will negotiate with any Taliban member who embraces the Afghan constitution, renounces violence and severs ties with al Qaeda. Informal contacts have been made in recent months with high-ranking Taliban figures, but no formal peace talks are under way.
The two groups do not seem to be inextricably aligned. While al Qaeda has backed worldwide terrorist attacks in the name of Muslim jihad, the Taliban has been mainly a nationalist movement aiming to regain control of Afghanistan.
The Taliban has claimed that rather than weaken their ties with al Qaeda, bin Laden’s death would boost their fighters’ morale. On Saturday the group tried to mount a coordinated assault on government buildings in southern city of Kandahar.
Bin Laden’s demise might weaken al Qaeda from within, Petraeus said, because bin Laden’s personality and aura were a key for raising money for the world jihad group, and without him, the group’s worldwide network might fall apart under his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
”Ayman al-Zawahiri is no Osama bin Laden,” Petraeus said.
Petraeus warned that al Qaeda is only one of a number of international terrorist organizations that would be eager to flood into an unstable Afghanistan if Nato forces left.
”The key is making sure there are no safe havens for those transnational terrorist groups in Afghanistan,” Petraeus said. He estimated that between 50 and 100 al Qaeda fighters move back and forth in eastern Afghanistan. He did not give estimates for other groups.
He said one key aspect for the future is tightening security along the border with Pakistan, through a strategy of ”defense in depth” that involves layers of checkpoints aimed at catching militants sneaking across the mountainous divide.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai drew an opposite conclusion from the bin Laden raid. He said it showed that the main fight is in Pakistan, not his country. He called for an end to night raids in Afghanistan, when Nato targets militants.
Petraeus said that Nato is working with Karzai to conduct operations within his guidelines.
”He has legitimate, understandable concerns,” Petraeus said, ”and we have worked hard to show not only that we are listening to his concerns, but that we are taking actions in response.”
Much of the debate about strategy in Afghanistan has focused on whether it is necessary to dedicate troops and money to building up communities, or if high-level terrorist targets could be eliminated with direct strikes. The bin Laden attack showed how key these strikes can be, but Petraeus argued that much of the progress in Afghanistan has come from clearing communities of insurgents and then establishing governance.
”Targeted military strikes don’t produce security on their own,” Petraeus said, noting that Nato forces only started to establish stability in southern Kandahar province when they combined such strikes with programs to build up government and local security forces.

US expects Pakistan to redefine security preferences

WASHINGTON: The United States believes that Osama bin Laden`s killing has created a new opportunity for Pakistan to redefine its relations with India and review its security preferences.

President Barack Obama and other US officials and lawmakers emphasised the need for a new political discourse with Pakistan in a series of interviews to various television networks over the weekend.
In these interviews, they defined last week`s raid on Bin Laden`s compound in Abbottabad, which led to the Al Qaeda`s leader`s death, also as an opportunity for Pakistan to recommit itself to the international community.
In doing so, President Obama also stressed that “the United States will not have to rely exclusively on Pakistan to investigate Osama bin Laden`s support network inside the country” and has retrieved enough materials from Bin Laden`s compound to make its own conclusions.
“The US has had Bin Laden`s compound under surveillance for months, checking the comings and goings. And there is all that material that was confiscated from his lair during the raid,” he said.
Mr Obama also acknowledged that the differences between the United States and Pakistan were real and underlined the need to work together more effectively to overcome those differences.
“There have been times where we`ve had disagreements. There have been times where we wanted to push harder, and for various concerns, they might have hesitated,” he said.
“Those differences are real. And they`ll continue,” he said but also stressed that Osama bin Laden`s discovery in a military town deep inside Pakistan provided an opportunity to remove those differences as well.
“I think that this will be an important moment in which Pakistan and the United States get together and say, `All right, we`ve gotten Bin Laden, but we`ve got more work to do`.”
The US president noted that there were “ways for us to work more effectively together than we have in the past” and such cooperation will be “important for our national security”.
Mr Obama did not explain the issues that divide the two countries, nor did he tell how he intended to deal with those issues.
But Senator John Kerry, who chairs the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and often conveys the Obama administration`s messages to Pakistan, not only underlined those issues but also spelled out plans for dealing with them.
But before doing so, like President Obama, Senator Kerry also conceded that “for a period of time our interests in Pakistan have not converged”.
The Pakistanis, he said, had had “a different set of interests about India, a different set of interests about what kind of Afghanistan they want to see”.
The Pakistanis, he added, have also been apprehensive about a 350,000-strong army being built up in Afghanistan.
“They have a different interest on nuclear weapons, for instance, and on nuclear policy,” he noted.
“All of that has to change. And all of that, I believe, can change,” he emphasised. “I`ve had some early conversations with high level officials of Pakistan. And there`s an indication to me there is an enormous amount of introspection going on and some very deep evaluating within Pakistan.” Senator Kerry said Pakistani officials had told him that they were thinking of “a government inquiry outside of the military” to determine who was responsible for keeping Bin Laden in Abbottabad.
“For the first time there is major criticism in Pakistani papers of the intelligence network and military in Pakistan,” the senator said.
“So I see this as a time for us to be careful, to be thoughtful, to proceed deliberately but determinedly in order to lay on the table the things that we know have to change,” the senator said.
“The relationship with the ISI, the double-dealing, the attitude, and frankly wastefulness of resources towards India, the question of cooperation with respect to Afghanistan” were the issues over which Pakistan needed to change its attitude, the senator said.
“I see opportunity in all of this to sort of punch a reset button and frankly serve our interests and theirs much more effectively.”

CIA won’t withdraw spy chief in Pakistan: officials

WASHINGTON: The Central Intelligence Agency has no intention of bringing home its chief operative in Pakistan despite an apparent attempt by the Pakistani media to unmask his identity, US officials said on Monday.
While the Pakistani media reports apparently were inaccurate, US officials said they believe the leak was a calculated attempt to divert attention from American demands for explanations of how Osama bin Laden could have hidden for years near Pakistan’s principal military academy.
US special forces killed bin Laden a week ago.
American officials suspect the attempted outing of the CIA station chief in Islamabad — the second incident of its kind in six months — was the work of someone in the Pakistani government, possibly Pakistan’s principal spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI).
The tense relationship between the CIA and the ISI has deteriorated further with the revelation that bin Laden lived for five years in Abbottabad, close to Pakistan’s capital.
The Obama administration has demanded access to ISI operatives and to bin Laden’s wives, who are in Pakistani custody, to try to map out the al Qaeda leader’s support network.
A private Pakistani TV network and a newspaper published what they said was the real name of the top CIA representative in Islamabad.
Two US officials familiar with dealings between Washington and Islamabad indicated that the name the TV channel aired was wrong, and that the real station chief would remain at his post.
“The current CIA station chief is a true pro, someone who knows how to work well with foreign partners and is looking to strengthen cooperation with Pakistani intelligence,” one of the US officials said.
This week’s incident follows a similar, more damaging leak to the Pakistani media in December.
In that incident, the man then serving as the CIA’s station chief in Islamabad left the country after his name appeared in local media accusing him of complicity in missile attacks in which civilians were killed.
US officials said they believed the exposure of the station chief was deliberate retaliation by elements of ISI who were upset that their agency and some of its officers had been named as defendants in a lawsuit filed in the US courts.
It was filed by the families of Americans killed by Pakistani militants in attacks on a Jewish center and other civilian targets in Mumbai, India in November 2008.
Allegations about ISI’s alleged relationship with the Lashkar e Taiba, a Pakistan-based group accused of carrying out the Mumbai attack, are expected to be aired at the trial in Chicago this month of a businessman accused by US authorities of involvement with the militant group.
The new attempt to disclose the CIA officer’s identity is a fresh blow to Pakistani-US relations, which were strained close to breaking point even before the raid last Monday in which US Navy SEAL commandos secretly flew across Pakistani territory, attacked his Abbotabad hide-out, killed the al Qaeda leader, and spirited away his body for burial at sea.

Bin Laden had Pakistan ‘complicity’: Key US senator

WASHINGTON: US Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein charged Monday that slain al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden could not have lived as he did in Pakistan without some official complicity. “I just don’t believe it was done without some form of complicity,” Feinstein told reporters as she delivered a stark and scathing warning to the troubled US ally to do more to battle extremists or risk souring ties.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney answers a question during a press briefing at the White House in Washington on May 9, 2011. the US said that it would not “apologize” for launching a raid to kill al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil, after the Islamabad government complained about US “unilateralism.” Carney said Washington took Pakistani complaints seriously but added: “we also do not apologize for the action that this president took.” Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani earlier complained about the US raid on Abbottabad last week which killed bin Laden, after the Pakistani government was not informed in advance. 


“I think either we’re going to be allies in fighting terror, or the relationship makes less and less sense to me,” said the senator, who indicated she foresaw cuts in billions in US aid absent a course correction in Islamabad.
While some US lawmakers have called for stepping up help to Pakistan, “I feel a little differently,” said Feinstein who complained that “we provide funds, we try to help the government wherever we can” and get little in return.
“It’s becoming increasingly problematic,” she said. “I thoroughly agree with the administration’s request that Pakistan take a good look at what the support services were for bin Laden.” Feinstein said it was “incomprehensible” that bin Laden could live unperturbed for six years in “a military community” in Pakistan before the May 2 raid in which elite US commandos shot dead the elusive al Qaeda leader.
While Pakistan has denied knowingly allowing the world’s most hunted man to live in relative luxury, “I just don’t believe it,” said Feinstein, who stressed “that level of complicity is really a problem.” Feinstein charged that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have been “essentially favoring the Haqqani network, which attacks our troops in Afghanistan,” while denying US forces access to their bases in remote North Waziristan.
“You have them not turning over both the inspirational head and the operational head of LeT, following the Mumbai bombing, to India,” she said, referring Lashkar-e-Taiba.
“Now you have this,” she said, referring to bin Laden.

Pakistan may grant US access to bin Laden’s wives

WASHINGTON: Pakistan now seems ready to allow the United States to interview the wives of Osama bin Laden who were with the al Qaeda leader when he was killed last week, a US official familiar with the matter said on Monday.
The three wives and several children were among 15 or 16 people taken into custody by Pakistani forces after US Navy SEAL commandos secretly flew into the country, killed bin Laden at a compound in Abbottabad and spirited away his body for burial at sea, said the security official.
“The Pakistanis now appear willing to grant access. Hopefully they’ll carry through on the signals they’ resending,” the official said.
There was no immediate comment from the White House.
Pakistan is a vital ally to Washington in the war against militants in neighboring Afghanistan but relations already were rocky over US drone strikes against insurgents in border regions, differences about priorities and US espionage in the nuclear-armed Muslim country.
Prickly ties between the Central Intelligence Agency and Pakistan’s main spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), have worsened with the revelation that bin Laden lived for five years in Abbottabad, home to Pakistan’s main military academy and not far from the capital Islamabad.
The CIA has no intention of bringing home its chief operative in Pakistan despite an apparent attempt by Pakistani media to unmask his identity, US officials said on Monday.
While the media reports apparently were inaccurate, US officials said they believe the leak was a calculated attempt to divert attention from demands for explanations of how bin Laden could have hidden for years in such a prominent place.
US officials suspect the attempted outing of the CIA station chief in Islamabad – the second incident of its kind in six months – was the work of someone in the Pakistani government or the ISI.
The Obama administration has demanded access to ISI operatives and bin Laden’s wives to try to map out al Qaeda’s network.
A True Pro
A private Pakistani TV network and a newspaper published what they said was the real name of the top CIA operative.
Two US officials familiar with dealings between Washington and Islamabad said the name the TV channel aired was wrong and that the real station chief would remain.
“The current CIA station chief is a true pro, someone who knows how to work well with foreign partners and is looking to strengthen cooperation with Pakistani intelligence,” one of the US officials said.
In December, the man then serving as the CIA’s station chief left Pakistan after his name appeared in local media accusing him of complicity in US missile attacks in which civilians were killed.
US officials said they believe the exposure of that station chief was deliberate retaliation by elements of ISI who were upset their agency and some of its officers had been named as defendants in a lawsuit filed in a US court.
It was filed by the families of Americans killed by Pakistani militants in attacks on a Jewish center and other civilian targets in Mumbai, India, in November 2008.
Allegations about ISI’s alleged relationship with the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based group accused of carrying out the Mumbai attack, are expected to be aired at the trial in Chicago this month of a businessman accused by US authorities of involvement with the militant group.

More confident China confronts US in latest talks

WASHINGTON: Five years and one financial crisis since the United States and China commenced regular high-level economic talks, fast-growing Beijing might have the upper hand this week in the latest round of discussions between the world’s two biggest economies.
China faces threats of penalties against goods shipped to its largest foreign market unless it does more to end what US manufacturers say are unfair trade practices, including currency manipulation, that have cost American jobs.
At the same time, America’s biggest foreign creditor wants assurances that its $1.2 trillion in US Treasury holdings are safe despite uncertainty in Washington over how much money the US can borrow to pay its bills. If Congress fails to increase that borrowing limit before August, that probably would send interest rates soaring and reduce the value of those Chinese investments.
While analysts don’t foresee major breakthroughs at the talks Monday and Tuesday, China’s expanding economic might will give it greater leverage now.
”The focus has shifted to making methodical if slow progress,” possibly reflecting a maturing relationship between the two nations, said Eswar Prasad, a China expert at Cornell University.
Leading the Obama administration’s delegation at the Strategic and Economic Dialogue are Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and officials from 16 federal agencies are attending, too.
The Chinese team is headed by Vice Premier Wang Qishan, a top economic policymaker, and includes officials from 20 government agencies.
The talks began during the Bush administration in 2006. Under President Barack Obama, they have broadened to cover foreign policy as well.
The main US economic goal hasn’t changed: prodding China to move faster to let its currency rise in value against the dollar. That would make US exports cheaper in China and Chinese products more expensive in the United States. It also would help narrow America’s trade deficit with China, its largest with any country.
When the talks started, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former head of Goldman Sachs, lectured Chinese officials on how much better their economy would perform if they eased controls on their currency and financial markets.
But the Chinese emerged from the global financial crisis in better shape than other economic powers, largely because of their highly regulated markets. In doing so, and in growing far faster than the US, Beijing has gained economic influence.
”The global financial crisis changed the dynamic of the relationship substantially,” said Nicholas Lardy, a China expert at the Peterson Institute of International Economics. ”It increased China’s confidence on economic issues.”
While Geithner said last week that the US would press China to accelerate efforts to revalue its currency, the yuan, he also sounded a conciliatory tone. He noted that the yuan has risen in value by 5 per cent since last June, and even faster once inflation was taken into account.
Geithner said it was encouraging that Beijing was starting to endorse the US view that a faster appreciation of the yuan would help China choke off inflation, which the country’s escalating growth has stoked.
A softer approach on China’s currency wouldn’t seem to please American manufacturers. They contend that China’s currency is undervalued by as much as 40 per cent and they want Congress to approve economic penalties if Beijing doesn’t move faster.
The US trade deficit with China last year was a record $273 billion, one-fifth more than in 2009. The administration is considering filing new trade cases against Chinese practices that US companies contend are unfair.
At the meetings, China is expected to raise concerns about the standoff between the administration and Congress on raising the government’s $14.3 trillion borrowing limit. Geithner has told Congress that the US could default on its debt if the limit isn’t raised by Aug. 2.
”The Chinese are concerned about this issue because they hold a lot of US debt,” said Prasad. ”The Chinese are astounded that the US government would let the debate get to the stage where there is even a remote possibility of a default.”
On other issues, US officials say they want to see more progress on economic commitments made when Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Obama in January. Those include closer monitoring of Chinese government purchases of software, a move intended to boost Beijing’s buying of legal US software and reduce its use of pirated software. American companies say such theft is costing them billions in lost sales.
The Chinese also pledged to revamp a policy that limits the ability of US companies to compete for Chinese government projects unless the products are designed in China.

Obama`s visit put off amid new pressure

WASHINGTON/ NEW YORK: US President Barack Obama said on Sunday that Osama bin Laden had a support network in Pakistan, as his senior aides spelled out a strategy that seeks to punish those responsible for hiding the Al Qaeda leader in Abbottabad where he was killed last week by American commandos.
“We think that there had to be some sort of support network for Bin Laden inside of Pakistan,” President Obama told the CBS show ‘60 Minutes’.
US National Security Adviser Thomas E. Donilon went a step ahead and categorically declared that “there was a network in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which supported Bin Laden”.
Mr Donilon also announced that President Obama had no plans to visit Pakistan in the near future. “There is not a visit on his schedule at this point. If he’d go to Pakistan, but there was at this point scheduling before the events of last Sunday,” when US commandos killed Bin Laden in his hideout.
The top US security official, however, acknowledged that he had “not seen evidence” to suggest “that the political, the military or the intelligence leadership would have foreknowledge of Bin Laden”.
Senator John Kerry, the US Congress’s top foreign policy official, further elaborated this point: “There is no evidence that at the highest level, General Pasha, General Kayani, the president of Pakistan, knew this, there’s no evidence at this moment.”
But, he added, “It is extraordinarily hard to believe that he could have survived there for five years or more in a major population centre without some kind of support system and knowledge.”
The statements give a clear picture of America’s post-Bin Laden strategy towards Pakistan, which not only requires Islamabad to break its ties with all terrorist groups but also to expose and punish those still having links with people like Osama.
But they also indicated that the United States wanted to achieve this objective by increasing its engagement with Pakistan and not by isolating it. Explaining what he wanted Pakistan to do now, President Obama said the US did not yet know “who or what that support network was”, which was supporting Bin Laden but would like to know.
“We don’t know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government, and that’s something that we have to investigate and, more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate,” he said.
“They have indicated they have a profound interest in finding out what kinds of support networks Bin Laden might have had,” Mr Obama said.
National Security Adviser Donilon said the US had already told Pakistan that “we will act to protect our interests”.
“They need to provide us with intelligence by the way from the compound that they gathered including access to Osama bin Laden’s three wives whom they have in custody,” he said. “We have had difficulty with Pakistan but we’ve also had to work very closely with Pakistan in our counter-terror efforts. More terrorists and extremists have been captured or killed in Pakistan than in any place in the world.”
In their first interviews since Bin Laden’s elimination, President Obama and his senior aides defended not informing Pakistan before sending their troops to the Abbottabad compound.
Mr Donilon rejected the suggestion that the US did not warn Pakistan before sending its troops inside the country because they did not trust the Pakistanis.
“That’s not a matter of trusting or not trusting and let me address that. It’s a matter of operational security,” he said. “To share it with any government outside the US would have been to lose control of dissemination which would not have been in the national interest.”
Mr Donilon and Senator Kerry also rejected the suggestion that Bin Laden was killed unarmed and while he was ready to surrender.
The US commandos “entered the compound and were fired upon. They had to breach several walls and doors to get to where Osama bin Laden was. At no point during the course of this operation did Osama bin Laden indicate that he was prepared to surrender”, said Mr Donilon. Like other senior US officials and politicians who participated in television talks shows on Sunday, Senator Kerry said Pakistan should increase its efforts to fight terrorists but added that this should be done by further engaging Pakistan, not by isolating it.
“I think this is a time of enormous opportunity. It’s opportunity for our relationship in Pakistan and an opportunity for our policies in Afghanistan. And obviously they are very, very linked,” he said.

Post-Osama strategy being thrashed out

ISLAMABAD: Amid mounting international and domestic pressure on the government over the May 2 US special forces’ “get Osama bin Laden” operation, the country’s top civilian and military leadership got their heads together on Saturday in an effort to come up with a collective response.
President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Chief of the Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani met for the second time at the Presidency since the Abbottabad operation.
According to an official statement, they ‘comprehensively reviewed’ the situation in the “perspective of Pakistan’s national security and foreign policy”.
The meeting decided that the prime minister would take the nation into confidence through parliament and give a policy statement on Monday.
The Senate is in session and the National Assembly will resume its proceedings on Monday afternoon after a nine-day recess.
A full debate on the issue would be conducted in parliament, the statement said.
The prime minister, who returned from a three-day official visit to France early in the morning, also held consultations
with Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar and the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Hina Rabbani Khar.
The meetings took place at a time when the government was under pressure from the international community to shed light on Osama’s hiding near the country’s premier military academy, besides demands from within the country for heads to roll.
The demand for the resignations of the president, the prime minister and the military leadership has come not only from Opposition Leader in the National Assembly, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan of the PML-N, but also from former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi of the Pakistan People’s Party.
At a news conference in Lahore on Saturday, Mr Qureshi said that besides resignations by President Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, action should be taken against heads of the Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) if they were held responsible by an official inquiry.
The US intrusion has heaped embarrassment on the political and military leadership and the nation has been demanding answers to the disturbing questions the operation has thrown up. Although the government has come up with different statements through the Foreign Office over the past couple of days, still a number of key questions remain unanswered.
Moreover, contradictory statements regarding the working of radars and surveillance system and the technology used by US forces in the May 2 swoop has also confounded the nation.
According to an official handout, the prime minister, in his consultative meetings “emphasised that the sole criterion for formulating our stance is safeguarding of Pakistan’s supreme national interest by all means, by all state institutions, in accordance with the aspirations of the people of Pakistan, who above all value their dignity and honour”.
Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan told a private news channel that the government would make public details of its version about the Abbottabad incident after an inquiry.
“We will definitely take the nation into confidence and make public the real facts about the incident,” she was quoted as saying.

US demands Pakistan disclose names of operatives: report

WASHINGTON: The administration of US President Barack Obama has demanded the identities of some of the top Pakistani intelligence operatives as the United States tries to determine whether any of them had contact with Osama bin Laden, The New York Times reported late Friday.
US President Barack Obama shakes hands with troops at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, May 6, 2011. 
Citing unnamed US officials, the newspaper said members of the US administration had expressed deep frustration with the Pakistani military and intelligence for their refusal to identify members of the agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, who were believed to have close ties to bin Laden.
In particular, US officials have demanded information on what is known as the ISI’s directorate, which has worked closely with militants since the days of the fight against the Soviet army in Afghanistan, the report said.
Bin Laden was killed in a May 2 raid by US special forces on a fortified compound located in Abbottabad, in the north of Pakistan.
Al-Qaeda and militants have vowed to avenge his killing, declaring him a “martyr” and calling on Muslims to rise up against the United States.
“It’s hard to believe that Kayani and Pasha actually knew that bin Laden was there,” a senior administration official said, referring to Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the ISI director-general, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha.
But “there are degrees of knowing, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we find out that someone close to Pasha knew.” Pakistani investigators involved in piecing together Bin Laden’s life during the past nine years said this week that he had been living in Pakistan’s urban centers longer than previously believed,” the paper said.
Two Pakistani officials say that bin Laden’s Yemeni wife, one of three wives now in Pakistani custody, told investigators that before moving in 2005 to the mansion in Abbottabad where he was eventually killed, bin Laden had lived with his family for nearly two and a half years in a small village, Chak Shah Mohammad, a little more than a mile southeast of the town of Haripur, on the main Abbottabad highway, The Times said.
One of the officials said this means that bin Laden left Pakistan’s rugged tribal region sometime in 2003 and had been living in northern urban regions since then, the report noted.

Father of captured US soldier seeks Pakistan’s help

BOISE: The father of the only US soldier held captive in the Afghan war appealed to the Pakistani military for help in freeing his son in a video posted on YouTube on Friday.
In this filed still image provided by IntelCenter on December 7, 2010 shows the Taliban associated video production group Manba al-Jihad December 7, 2010 release of someone that appears to be US soldier Bowe Bergdahl (L), who has been held hostage by the Taliban since his disappearance from his unit on June 30, 2009. Also with him in this clip appears to be Taliban commander Maulawi Sangin (R).


The parents of Spc. Bowe Bergdahl have declined to say much publicly since their son went missing from his base in southern Afghanistan on June 30, 2009. While it’s unclear where the 25-year-old soldier is being held, a video released on the Internet earlier this week shows him standing next to a senior official in the Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani network in Paktika province in Afghanistan.
In Friday’s video, Idaho resident Bob Bergdahl urges members of the Pakistani military to help secure his son’s release. He directly references Pakistan Army Chief of Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the head of the country’s intelligence service.
”Our family is counting on your professional integrity and your honor to secure the safe return of our son,” he said.
”And we thank you. Our family knows the high price that has been paid by your men in the army and the frontier corps. We give our condolences and thanks to the families of those who have fallen for Pakistan.”
Idaho National Guard spokesman Col. Tim Marsano, a liaison for the US Army in Idaho, confirmed that Bob Bergdahl is the man in the video.
Wearing a long beard he began growing just after his son’s capture, Bob Bergdahl speaks in both English and Arabic in the video, and he talks directly to members of the Haqqanis and their military commander, Mullah Sangeen.
”Strangely to some, we must also thank those who have cared for our son, for almost two years, Mullah Sangeen, the Haqqanis, and others who have played a role in sheltering the American prisoner,” he said. ”We know our son is a prisoner and at the same time a guest in your home.”
The US considers the Haqqani group to be its greatest enemy in Afghanistan. US Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, complained last month that Pakistan’s military-run intelligence service maintains links to the Haqqani network. The Haqqanis are Afghan Taliban who control parts of eastern Afghanistan and have bases in Pakistan’s North Waziristan frontier tribal region.
The video comes after Osama Bin Laden’s death on Sunday in Pakistan. Bergdahl doesn’t allude to any relationship between that and the timing of this video.
Speaking to his son, Bob Bergdahl offered reassurances that the family has done all it can  and that they want him home safe.
”We have been quiet in public, but we have not been quiet behind the scenes,” Bob Bergdahl said. ”Continue to be patient and kind to those around you. You are not forgotten.”
In the video, Bergdahl appears to reference the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, or Taliban.
”We understand the rationale the Islamic Emirate has made through their videos,” Bergdahl said.
”No family in the United States understands the detainee issue like ours. Our son’s safe return will only heighten public awareness of this. That said, our son is being exploited. It is past time for Bowe and the others to come home.”
Bergdahl does not indicate to whom he’s referring to with the phrase ”the others.” There are no other US soldiers in captivity in Afghanistan.
Marsano said he was uncertain about the passage. ”I’m not privy to all the information Mr. Bergdahl has, nor did he ask me to expand upon his remarks,” Marsano said.
A phone call to US Central Command in Florida wasn’t immediately returned.
The Bergdahls, who live in a home outside of Hailey near the tourist resort of Sun Valley, have largely shunned media attention following their son’s capture. Last year, Bowe Bergdahl’s mother, Jani Bergdahl, attended an elementary school ceremony after students wrote President Barack Obama urging him to help bring about the captive’s release.

Musharraf slams US over bin Laden raid

DUBAI: Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf has slammed the United States for violating Islamabad’s sovereignty in carrying carry out the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a media report said Saturday.
The former military strongman told the expatriate Pakistan community in Dubai that all “peace loving people” should be happy that bin Laden was killed, but no Pakistani accepted the violation of their sovereignty. “No country will accept such a violation by the US, which undermines Pakistan’s sovereignty, army and intelligence,” Musharraf was quoted as saying in The National daily. “This is not acceptable to any Pakistani individual.”
However, Musharraf insisted that Pakistan and the US must work together to eliminate terrorism and urged that there should not be a showdown between the two.
“The relationship between Pakistan and the US has not been at its best for a while now, but to defeat Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which is now our biggest threat, this relationship should not develop into confrontation,” he said.
Questions have been raised in the US about Pakistan’s role in the sheltering of bin Laden at a million-dollar villa within a stone’s throw of a prestigious Pakistan military academy at Abbottabad, near the capital Islamabad.
Musharraf said he did not believe that Pakistani government or military officials had knowledge of bin Laden’s presence or were harbouring him.
“It is not unusual for blunders to occur,” he said. “Look at 9/11 (September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States) unfortunately those attacks did happen, so where was their US intelligence then?” In an interview with the National Public Radio in the US, Musharraf had on Friday blamed incompetence by his country’s intelligence agencies for allowing Al-Qaeda leader to live undetected in Pakistan for years.
“One can draw only two conclusions,” Musharraf told NPR. “One is complicity from our intelligence agencies. The second is incompetence and I strongly believe in the latter,” Musharraf said.
“I cannot imagine that there was complicity.” Pakistan has come under fire for failing to track down the world’s most wanted man, who was shot dead in a raid by US commandos on May 2 in a heavily fortified compound not far from Islamabad.
Reports have said the architect of the September 11, 2011 attacks on the United States may have been living for five years in the town of Abbottabad, close to the homes of many retired Pakistani generals.
Asked whether he was upset that he did not know that bin Laden had been sheltering in Pakistan during his presidency, Musharraf said: “Frankly, yes.”” It is terrible,” he replied, adding he wanted to ask Pakistani intelligence officials “why the hell did you not know?” Musharraf, a former Pakistani military commando and army chief, resigned as president under pressure in 2008 after initially seizing power in a 1999 coup while returning from a visit to Sri Lanka.
He now lives in self-imposed exile in London, but is wanted over the 2007 murder of ex-premier Benazir Bhutto, accused of failing to provide her with enough security.