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Etats-Unis
- Les pressions s'accentuent sur le Pakistan
pour tuer ou capturer Ossama Bin Laden avant les élections de Novembre -
The Bush administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan
to kill or capture Osama bin Laden...
PAKISTAN
FOR BUSH. July
Surprise?
The New Republic 07/07/04
"This spring, the administration significantly increased
its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his
deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar,
all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas
of Pakistan. A succession of high-level American officials--from
outgoing CIA Director George Tenet to Secretary of State Colin
Powell to Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca to State
Department counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South
Asia official--have visited Pakistan in recent months to urge
General Pervez Musharraf's government to do more in the war on
terrorism. In April, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to
Afghanistan, publicly chided the Pakistanis for providing a
"sanctuary" for Al Qaeda and Taliban forces crossing the
Afghan border. "The problem has not been solved and needs to
be solved, the sooner the better," he said."
"This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable,
had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that
the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before
Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration
denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral
calendar. "Our attitude and actions have been the same since
September 11 in terms of getting high-value targets off the street, and that doesn't change because of an
election," says
National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack. But The
New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials
have been told they must produce HVTs by the election. According
to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and
wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest
pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S.
elections." Introducing target dates for Al
Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism
relations--according to a recently departed intelligence official,
"no timetable[s]" were discussed in 2002 or 2003--but
the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline
pressure to the hunt.
Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry,
which is responsible for internal security, explains, "The
Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush
administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they
are facing hard times in the coming elections." (These
sources insisted on remaining anonymous. Under Pakistan's Official
Secrets Act, an official leaking information to the press can be
imprisoned for up to ten years.).
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A third source, an official who works under ISI's director,
Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr
that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that
apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an]
absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush
administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts
they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement:
"The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly
by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in
Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such
comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House
aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the
arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six,
twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of
the Democratic National Convention in Boston..."
Lire également :
CNN
NEWSNIGHT AARON BROWN
CNN Transcript 07/07/04
"...Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, a most serious allegation.
"The New Republic" tomorrow will report the
administration is pressuring Pakistan to find bin Laden before the
November election, pressuring with both the carrot and the
stick..."
"...BROWN: Starting with the obvious, we can't imagine
there's anyone in the country who doesn't want to see Osama bin
Laden and his henchmen killed or captured and the sooner the
better. No doubt either that when it happens the administration on
whose watch it happens will win an awful lot of gratitude and
maybe more. Where all this leaves the obvious and enters the realm
of the cynical has to do with the timing. "The New Republic," in a piece to be released
tomorrow, will allege
that the administration through various means is pressuring the
government of Pakistan to deliver bin Laden and his henchmen
before the November election, preferably during the Democratic
Convention a couple of weeks from now.
Peter Beinart is the editor of "The New Republic."
Peter, good to see you. Let's start with the allegation itself.
Have I basically laid it out correctly?
PETER BEINART, EDITOR, "THE NEW REPUBLIC": That's right.
Our story by Spencer Ackerman and John Judis and a Pakistani
journalist named Massoud Ansari quotes four Pakistani officials,
all people in a position to know, saying that they have been
receiving pressure from Bush administration officials to deliver
Osama bin Laden or another high value al Qaeda target like his
deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri before the November election.
And, one of those sources, a very senior person, said that --
specifically said that they want those -- they want that capture
in the last days of July during the Democratic Convention.
BROWN: All right, let's talk about sourcing here because obviously
the allegation itself is explosive. It's reminiscent of the talk
of the October surprise during the Iranian hostage crisis. Some of
the sources, most of the sources in fact are unnamed, correct?
BEINART: Yes.
BROWN: What sort of jobs do they have?
BEINART: They are people in the Pakistani Intelligence Service,
people who are well known within Pakistan as having relations with
American officials and people who would be in a position to know
this information. We don't claim that this story, by any means,
closes the book on this.
We would hope that other people would pursue this story and do
further reporting on it but we think when you have four Pakistani
officials in positions in the government who are saying, who all
say virtually the same thing that they've been receiving this
pressure, pressure that they did not receive in 2002 and 2003, all
pressure that they link to the election, in their words, we think
it's a story that deserves to be told.
BROWN: Who is the pressure coming from?
BEINART: The pressure is coming from Bush administration officials. We don't know who in particular has been
pressuring,
although we do know that a number of high level Bush
administration officials from George Tenet to others at the CIA to
Colin Powell to others at the State Department have, in fact,
visited Pakistan recently and applied an increased amount of
pressure to Pakistan to go into the tribal areas and try to hunt
down and capture bin Laden or Zawahiri or perhaps former Taliban
leader Mullah Omar. BROWN: All right. I want to deal with the
tribal areas and where it is believed bin Laden and his folks are
hiding in a second. Just one more question on the sourcing on
this.
The Pakistani Intelligence Service, and at least two of the
sources in this story come from there, that's a very complicated
organization that has some allegiance to extremist Islamic groups,
has sometimes questionable allegiance to President Musharraf
himself. What is their motivation, do you think, in talking right
now?
BEINART: Well, that's a good question. I'm not sure honestly I
know what their motivation is. I think that it's true that the
Pakistani intelligence is a complex web of people with a lot of
different allegiances but I think they -- one potential reason
they're talking is that it's a very difficult business for
Pakistan to go into these tribal areas and try to hunt down bin
Laden.
As you know, these are areas where the Pakistani military has
essentially not had any presence for decades and decades and
decades. There is a certain amount of resentment.
One might hypothesize that one reason for them talking is that
there is significant resentment within the Pakistani government
after the increased pressure they're facing from the U.S. to go
into these tribal areas where they're facing very, very difficult
firefights with a population that is not very supportive of the
Pakistani government.
BROWN: Well, and on this point we can attest to some resentment
from our own experience over there within the Pakistani government
on the pressure that the Americans put on them. It is for the
Pakistani government a very complicated question. They have a
population that is not unsupportive of Osama bin Laden in many
respects and they have an area that in their view could break out
in civil war.
BEINART: That's exactly right. I think one of the reasons this is
-- the increased incursion into those tribal areas in recent
months under American pressure and, according to some, with
American involvement have been so controversial in Pakistan is
because of the threat that they pose a threat to civil war that
they perhaps pose a threat to President Pervez Musharraf's
government because there has been a -- there has been a kind of de
facto understanding in Pakistan for many, many decades that the
central government essentially leaves these very lawless tribal
areas alone and that compact has now been violated under American
pressure.
BROWN: Does the administration flat out deny the story?
BEINART: The administration has a denial in the story and I would
encourage people to read it for itself and to parse the words but,
yes, it's a denial.
BROWN: Is it, let me just try it one more time, is it a flat out,
this is absolutely untrue denial or is it more hedged than that?
BEINART: The way I read it, it is somewhat hedged. It could have
been a stronger denial. Others might read it differently. BROWN:
Listen, you're putting this on the Web site and putting it in the
magazine. You're obviously extremely confident in the story.
You're a sophisticated political guy. You understand the stakes
here. Do you have any second thoughts about putting the story out
there?
BEINART: No, knowing these reporters that we're working with, you
know, knowing that we have this source from four people, even
though as you said they're not on the record, we feel comfortable
about this.
The story is written in a very careful way. We did not oversell
the story but we felt that we had enough information to put this
out there and as part of the public debate.
BROWN: Peter, it's good to see you again. It's a story in total is
on "New Republic" online. You can check it out there and
I assume it will be in the magazine when the magazine comes out
next, good to see you.
BEINART: That's right. Thank you..."
Bush
is sowing fear for votes: Critics
New Al Qaeda terror alert issued `July
deadline' to find bin Laden
Toronto Star 09/07/04
"The Bush administration faced accusations on two fronts
yesterday that it was using the threat of terrorist attacks for
its own political advantage in an election year.
First, the White House was forced to deny an explosive report in
The New Republic magazine accusing it of pressuring Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf to kill or capture Osama bin Laden or
his top lieutenants before the Nov. 2 election.
The magazine also quoted a Pakistani intelligence source as saying
President George W. Bush's office has pushed hard for a "high
value target" to be served up by the end of this month to
coincide with the Democratic national convention where John Kerry
will be officially nominated as the party's presidential
candidate.
Then, the White House was accused of sowing fear unnecessarily
when Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge held a news conference to
warn of Al Qaeda operations targeting the U.S. during the election
season..."
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