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| India-Pakistan |
| Benazir was warned 4 groups were out to kill her |
| 2008-01-24 |
| Former premier Benazir Bhutto told an American reporter that a “brother country” had warned her that four networks, three of them operating in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, and one based in Karachi, planned to kill her. Steve Coll, former Washington Post correspondent, writes in the January 28 issue of the New Yorker magazine that the three Federally Administrated Tribal Areas groups were Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and Lal Masjid survivors. She told him that the support networks of these groups were rooted in sections of Pakistan’s government. She told Coll in October after the attack on her homecoming procession, “Everybody talks about Baitullah Mehsud and Osama Bin Laden and all of that. There is another structure that is giving them succour, that is giving them encouragement.” As prime minister, she had discussed support to Islamist groups with ISI officials, “a fact that she denied at the time but later conceded.” Benazir told Coll when he asked if she trusted Musharraf, “You can’t see into people’s hearts. I don’t know him, so I can’t say.” The contacts between Benazir and Musharraf began in August 2006 when he phoned her while she was in New York. “Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani, then the chief of the ISI, led an initial round of discussions.” Benazir flew by helicopter to a palace in Abu Dhabi in January 2007 to meet Musharraf, he writes. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #2 Damn! Beat me to it, AH. ;-p |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-01-24 20:05 |
| #1 Only 4 groups? Seemed like there should have been more in Pakland. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2008-01-24 06:03 |