ISLAMABAD, 2 March 2004 — Pakistan yesterday rejected as “absolutely absurd” a report that Washington tolerated Islamabad’s pardoning of a self-confessed nuclear proliferator in order to get thousands of US troops on Pakistani soil to hunt Osama Bin Laden.
“There is no ‘quid pro quo’,” Pakistan’s military spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said, denying the claims in this week’s New Yorker magazine. “Pakistan would never trade its sovereignty for any other issue.”
The magazine quoted an unnamed former United States intelligence official linking the allegedly planned deployment of US troops in Pakistan to the Islamic republic’s decision not to prosecute Abdul Qadeer Khan for supplying nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
“We’re going to get our troops inside Pakistan in return for not forcing (Pakistani leader Pervez) Musharraf to deal with Khan,” the US official told New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersch.
Pakistani and US troops, operating on separate sides of the 2,500 kilometer (1,550 mile) Pakistan-Afghanistan border, have launched a fresh spring offensive against Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants in a stepped-up bid to capture the elusive Al-Qaeda chief.
Pakistani officials have repeatedly denied media reports that US troops will operate on its territory. “Pakistan has said very clearly that on the Pakistani side there will be only Pakistani forces operating,” Sultan said.
The Foreign Ministry said the report carried “artificial linkages.”
“Operations in the war on terrorism on the Pakistan side of the Pakistan-Afghan border have been and will be conducted exclusively by the Pakistani forces,” spokesman Masood Khan said.
“There is no secret deal or understanding. Attributing a claim to an unnamed US official has merely embellished the story, without any regard for facts.”
President Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan in early February after he confessed to selling nuclear secrets overseas and denied any involvement by Pakistan’s military.
Musharraf’s refusal to allow an international inquiry into the proliferation scandal has been criticized as an attempt to prevent exposure of any role by Pakistan’s military.
The New Yorker quoted a Bush administration intelligence officer as saying he was convinced Pakistan’s military was involved in the proliferation scheme.
“The military has to be involved, at all levels,” he said, without being named.
Pakistan’s military spokesman defended the pardoning of Khan as a matter of “national interest.”
“Whatever decision we took about Khan was not the result of any deal, it was clearly a decision of the Pakistani government which was thought to be in our own national interest and probably the best that was required for Dr. A.Q. Khan,” Sultan said.
A Pentagon planner quoted by the New Yorker said US Special Forces units, including the elite commando unit Taskforce 121, will be shifted from Iraq to Pakistan for the Bin Laden hunt. Citing American officials, the magazine said a logistical buildup for the offensive began in mid-February with American C-17 cargo planes transporting helicopters, vehicles, and other equipment daily to military bases in Pakistan.
Islamabad has provided the US military with at least three airbases for operations inside Afghanistan since the offensive to wipe out the Taleban regime, for harboring Bin Laden, began in October 2001.
