By SADAQAT JAN
The Associated Press

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan said Monday there are no al-Qaida or Taliban safe havens in its territory and that new laws tying U.S. aid to Islamabad’s performance in fighting militants threatens to harm security cooperation between the two countries.

Pakistani officials have grown increasingly annoyed at a wave of recent claims from Washington and U.S. presidential candidates that al-Qaida has regrouped in the tribal regions along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

Washington has strongly criticized a September 2006 peace deal with pro-Taliban militants that reduced the Pakistani army’s presence in restive North Waziristan. Last month, the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate indicated that al-Qaida may be regrouping in the region because the peace deal allowed more freedom for militants to operate.

But Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam rebutted that claim at a weekly briefing Monday. “There is no al-Qaida or Taliban safe haven in Pakistan,” she said.

Aslam also reiterated Pakistan’s criticism of a bill signed by President Bush on Friday that requires the president to confirm that Pakistan is making progress in combatting al-Qaida and Taliban inside its territory before the United States provides aid to the Muslim nation.

read more HERE

By SADAQAT JAN

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A suspected suicide bomber killed 13 people at a hotel near Islamabad’s Red Mosque on Friday as the government reopened the religious complex for the first time since a bloody army raid ousted Islamic militants from the site.

Hundreds of students clashed with security forces outside the mosque and occupied it for several hours before being dispersed. They denounced President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and demanded the return of a pro-Taliban cleric who was detained during the siege earlier this month.

The bomb struck the Muzaffar Hotel, in a downtown market area about a quarter mile from the mosque. Local television showed victims - many of them bleeding or badly burned, with their clothing in tatters - being carried from the wreckage to waiting ambulances.

Amir Mehmood, a witness, said he saw blood, body parts, and shreds of a Punjab police uniform inside the hotel.

Khalid Pervez, Islamabad’s top administrator, said 13 people were killed, including seven police, and 71 were wounded.

Kamal Shah, another top Interior Ministry official, said initial reports suggested it was a suicide attack targeting police. Authorities recovered human remains that led them to suspect the bombing had been carried out by a suicide attacker, a senior police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

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God help us……

WASHINGTON - The U.S. would consider military force if necessary to stem al-Qaida’s growing ability to use its hideout in Pakistan to launch terrorist attacks, a White House aide said Sunday.

The president’s homeland security adviser, Fran Townsend, said the U.S. was committed first and foremost to working with Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, in his efforts to control militants in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. But she indicated the U.S. was ready to take additional measures.

“Just because we don’t speak about things publicly doesn’t mean we’re not doing things you talk about,” Townsend said, when asked in a broadcast interview why the U.S. does not conduct special operations and other measures to cripple al-Qaida.

“Job No. 1 is to protect the American people. There are no options off the table,” she said.

The national intelligence director, Mike McConnell, said he believed that Osama bin Laden was living in the tribal, border region of Pakistan. Bin Laden is the leader of the al-Qaida network and mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

More at YahooNews

from BBC Online

The Pakistani army says it has found 73 bodies inside a mosque compound in Islamabad, after fierce battles between soldiers and gunmen inside.

Officials said the Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid, complex had been cleared of militants but troops were combing the area for booby traps and explosives.

The mosque’s radical chief cleric, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, was among the dead, the army said.

The operation followed a week-long siege of the compound by troops.

The mosque had been the focus of spiraling tensions between the government and radical students, who had waged a campaign for the adoption of strict Islamic sharia law.

It had been feared that women and children might be among the casualties, but army spokesman Maj Gen Waheed Arshad said none had been found among the bodies.

Scores of civilians, and some militants, emerged from the complex after troops launched an all-out assault in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

read more at BBC ONLINE

By Kamran Haider
from YAHOO! News

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani forces stormed a mosque compound in the capital on Tuesday after talks to end a week-long standoff with militants broke down. Initial reports put casualties at 26 killed and many wounded.

Big blasts and gunfire rang out over the capital as the assault began an hour before dawn, and more than three hours later the sounds of the battle were still being heard, though firing had become more sporadic.

By 7:50 a.m. (0250 GMT), military spokesman Major-General Waheed Arshad said more than half the mosque’school complex had been cleared.

Twenty children escaped as commandos overran Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, but a military spokesman said fierce fighting raged at the religious school and library in the compound, where hundreds of women and children were believed to be hunkered down.

Early information indicated 23 militants and three members of the security forces were killed in the assault, with many wounded, the military said.

“Progress is very slow because they’re using women and children as human shields. The area is heavily mined and we’re facing stiff resistance,” a security official told Reuters.

“The mosque has been cleared. Commandoes are now clearing the madrasa. They have cleared (the) rooftop of the madrasa and now trying to get down into the madrasa,” an intelligence officer said..

The militants put up strong resistance, using rockets and grenades as well as automatic weapons, the military said.

The attack began immediately after talks to end a week-long standoff with the rebel cleric inside Lal Masjid broke down.

Thick smoke shrouded the compound troops have surrounded since clashes erupted between armed student radicals and government forces on July 3.

There are fears the militants may resort to suicide bombs. Officials said on Monday that suicide vests had been distributed among the defenders.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

By MARK MAZZETTI
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, July 7 - A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.

The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.

But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.

Mr. Rumsfeld decided that the operation, which had ballooned from a small number of military personnel and C.I.A. operatives to several hundred, was cumbersome and put too many American lives at risk, the current and former officials said. He was also concerned that it could cause a rift with Pakistan, an often reluctant ally that has barred the American military from operating in its tribal areas, the officials said.

The decision to halt the planned “snatch and grab” operation frustrated some top intelligence officials and members of the military’s secret Special Operations units, who say the United States missed a significant opportunity to try to capture senior members of Al Qaeda.

read more at The New York Times

Where ISN’T there a crisis? And why are we involved or somehow responsible for every one of them? Oh yah……His Highnieness got us here. I guess this is what you get when you back a dictator. Oh….and why is this dictator ok, but others aren’t? And this one ALREADY has access to the nuclear button. Guess we don’t want to piss him off now, do we.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: A senior U.S. envoy gave strong backing to the government of Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on Friday, but balanced it with a call for more democracy amid growing opposition to his eight-year rule.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was visiting as Musharraf faces street protests for suspending the country’s chief justice and as U.S. lawmakers question American backing for a military leader reluctant to yield power to civilians.

After talks with Musharraf and other senior officials, Negroponte praised Pakistan’s front-line role in fighting terrorism, in which it has captured scores of al-Qaida suspects and lost hundreds of soldiers battling militants.

The message he delivered “is one of strong friendship and trust for and with the government and the people of Pakistan. We believe we have an excellent partnership,” Negroponte told reporters.

Washington has been steadfast in its public support for Musharraf, making clear that the global fight against al-Qaida as well as the war in neighboring Afghanistan take priority.

More at the International Herald Tribune

“They send us a bill, and we just pay it,” said a senior military official who has dealt extensively with President Musharraf. “Nobody can really explain what we are getting for this money or even where it’s going.”

BRILLIANT!! Worst administration………EVER!!!!

WASHINGTON: The United States is continuing to make large payments of roughly $1 billion a year to Pakistan for what it calls reimbursements to the country’s military for conducting counterterrorism efforts along the border with Afghanistan, even though Pakistan’s president decided eight months ago to slash patrols through the area where Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are most active.

The monthly payments, called coalition support funds, are not widely advertised. Buried in public budget numbers, the payments are intended to reimburse Pakistan’s military for the cost of the operations. So far, Pakistan has received more than $5.6 billion under the program over five years, more than half of the total aid the United States has sent to the country since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, not counting covert funds.

Some American military in the region has recommended that the money be tied to Pakistan’s performance in pursuing Al Qaeda and keeping the Taliban from gaining a haven from which to attack the government of Afghanistan. American officials have been surprised by the speed at which both organizations have gained strength in the past year.

But Bush administration officials say no such plan is being considered, despite new evidence that the Pakistani military is often looking the other way when Taliban fighters retreat across the border into Pakistan, ignoring calls from American spotters to intercept them. There is also at least one American report that Pakistani security forces have fired in support of Taliban fighters attacking Afghan posts.

More at the International Herald Tribune