ISLAMABAD, 22 May 2007 — Pakistan yesterday denied a report that up to 50 US Central Intelligence Agency officials are in the country hunting for Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden.
The report in the Los Angeles Times at the weekend said a major hunt for Bin Laden launched by the CIA last year had unearthed no significant leads on his whereabouts.
“There is no question of 50 CIA agents looking for Bin Laden in Pakistan,” Foreign Office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told a weekly briefing when asked to comment on the report.
“We have no real evidence or intelligence on Bin Laden’s whereabouts and nobody knows where he is,” she added.
The LA Times report quoted US officials as saying that Al-Qaeda had a command base in Pakistan’s tribal region bordering Afghanistan that was being increasingly funded by cash coming out of Iraq.
US officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney when he visited Islamabad earlier this year, have alleged that Al-Qaeda is regrouping in the troubled tribal zone bordering Afghanistan. Tasnim, however, said there was no Al-Qaeda base on Pakistani soil.
“There may be some remnants of Al-Qaeda in Pakistan, but we are taking strong action against them,” she said.
The LA Times said the CIA had deployed as many as 50 clandestine operatives to Pakistan and Afghanistan — a dramatic increase over the number of CIA case officers permanently stationed in those countries.
All of the new arrivals were given the primary objective of finding what counterterrorism officials call “high-value targets,” meaning Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’s number two, Ayman Al-Zawahri, according to the LA Times report.
Pakistan Protests UK Envoy’s Remarks
The government has lodged a strong protest with the British government over reported comments by London’s envoy about President Pervez Musharraf’s commitment to democracy.
The protest came a week after British High Commissioner Robert Brinkley was quoted as saying that Musharraf should quit as army chief and hold free and fair elections by the end of the year.
“The acting British high commissioner was called to the Foreign Office three days ago over remarks by the British high commissioner about the fate of democracy in Pakistan,” Tasnim said. “This was an unsolicited statement. These remarks were unacceptable and tantamount to interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs,” she said.
“The acting high commissioner was asked to convey a strong protest to the British government. We think his comments were against diplomatic etiquette and should not be repeated in future.”
British government sources confirmed that Brinkley was out of the country but said that exchanges between the high commissioner and the Foreign Office were private. Brinkley was quoted by several local media outlets as telling reporters in the eastern city of Lahore on Wednesday that democracy in Pakistan also depended on an independent judiciary.
Government Not to Recognize Israel
Pakistan will not recognize Israel until and unless an independent Palestinian state is created in accordance with the Beirut Declaration, Tasnim said. She was commenting on a statement by Azad Kashmir Prime Minister Sardar Attique in which he said that Pakistan should recognize Israel.
