The Hindu : U.S., U.K. express solidarity with Pak.

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, May 11, 2002

International

International

U.S., U.K. express solidarity with Pak.

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD May 10. As the investigative agencies in Pakistan continued their efforts to establish the identity of the persons and group behind the Karachi suicide bombing on Wednesday that led to death of 16 persons, including 11 French engineers and technicians working on a Naval project, the Karachi police seem to believe that a local group could be behind the attack.

The only consolation for the Musharraf Government during the day was telephone calls by the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, expressing their solidarity in the fight of Pakistan against terrorism.

In the course of their conversation with the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, both the leaders praised the efforts of the military government in eliminating extremism and asserted that terrorists would fail in their designs. They assured all support to Gen. Musharraf in the campaign against international terrorism.

The two telephone calls and the assuring words from the Western leaders must have come as a solace to Gen. Musharraf as the ugly face of terrorism has began to unfold in Pakistan posing a serious challenge to his government. While no one had expected it to be easy taming the jehadi forces, created and nurtured for over two decades beginning with the U.S. proxy war in Afghanistan against the former Soviet Union, the third terrorist incident involving foreigners has jolted the Pakistan establishment.

The Pakistan English daily, The News, in a report attributed to sources in the establishment has said that Karachi Police investigators have found strong evidence to suggest that an unidentified Pakistani group played an active role in the planning and execution of the bomb blast.

The report said that on the basis of initial evidence on the suicide bombing, senior Pakistani security officers were suspecting that the elements from the same group could be behind the church shooting in Bahawalpur in October last year, Islamabad church shooting in March and Daniel Pearl's kidnapping and subsequent murder in February.

``There are a number of similarities in the material and circumstantial evidence picked up from the most striking cases of terrorism reported here since the Americans launched military campaign in Afghanistan,'' it quoted a senior Pakistani security officer as saying.

It appears a car dealer in Karachi's central district sold the car used in the incident the previous day (Tuesday). The buyers were three Urdu and Punjabi speaking young men — all in their late twenties.

The buyers were in such a great hurry that they did not allow the car showroom people to fix the worn out battery of the car and instead requested them to push the car to help charge the old battery.

The paper quoted a police officer as saying "the people involved in this action were not petty criminals, but they were experts in improvising bombs and planting them on vehicles and individuals with a fairly rapid speed''.

It said the recent terrorism cases, particularly those involving the Westerners, seem to belong to the manual of terrorism recovered from various hideouts in Afghanistan. Police have also found that the mobile phone number left with the car dealers by one of three buyers of the car was bought on a fake national identity card, hence there was no clue about the real identity of its user.

Security officers said that like the church bombing and the Pearl kidnapping-cum-murder case, the perpetrators appeared to be local religious activists having deep connections with the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

``These are the same people who responded to the calls by their leaders by crossing borders into Afghanistan almost empty handed to fight the United States military might last year,'' the paper quoted a security officer as saying. "There is a plenty of evidence to believe that some regrouping of Pakistani and Afghani Taliban has taken place in various Pakistani cities under an active Al-Qaeda control in recent weeks.''

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

International

Stories in this Section

U.S., U.K. express solidarity with Pak.

Siege of Bethlehem church ends

India, U.S. expanding bilateral defence cooperation

Top U.S. award for Indian scientist

Permanent Indus panel to meet in Delhi

'Women still under threat'

LTTE-Govt. wrangle over highway continues

Blair to go by U.N. mandate on Iraq

Stay off Gujarat, foreign Govts. tell their citizens

Thousands rally against Maoist insurgency