Pakistan aid: US offers $2 billion more -- but attaches conditions - Christian Science Monitor

Washington

The US is offering Pakistan $2 billion in new military aid as part of a classic carrot-and-stick approach to what is perhaps the single most crucial country in the international battle with Islamist militancy.

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Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced at the conclusion Friday of a three-day “strategic dialogue” with Pakistani senior officials a new five-year military assistance package designed to prod Pakistan into taking a harder line with militants. Those extremists range from groups bent on bringing down Pakistan’s fragile democracy to Al Qaeda and other organizations more focused on international terrorist acts.

“The United States has no stronger partner when it comes to counterterrorism efforts against the extremists who threaten us both than Pakistan,” Secretary Clinton said in announcing the Pakistan aid package. The two delegations, she said, had “productive discussions” about the need to root out extremist groups that “threaten the security first and foremost of the people of Pakistan, of neighbors, of the United States, and indeed of the world.”

But the offer of new military aid came with a privately issued warning – the stick in the equation – that Pakistan risks losing this and other aid the US offers if the government does not adopt a more aggressive stance toward militants.

Despite whatever tough words the US had for the Pakistanis in private, prospects for a radically different approach from Pakistan toward the extremists groups are not good, some regional experts say.

“I don’t perceive Pakistan changing its objectives, and that’s really the core issue here,” says Malou Innocent, a foreign policy analyst focusing on Pakistan and Afghanistan at the Cato Institute in Washington. “Since 9/11 we have pushed, prodded, and threatened ... and it’s clear to me that Pakistan is not going to alter its internal politics or shift its security policies no matter how much aid the US gives.”

Pakistan has undertaken offensives into some militant strongholds, but it has not launched into others like North Waziristan and has left unscathed other groups the US is focused on, Ms. Innocent says. Those groups include the Haqqani network, which some US officials now consider the most powerful Taliban-affiliated organization in Pakistan; the Quetta Shura, the Afghan Taliban leadership located in Pakistan since being ousted from Afghanistan; and Al Qaeda.

During the three days of meetings, Pakistani officials emphasized their country’s role as a key partner for Washington in the international battle with extremism. But at the same time, they were adamant that Pakistan will do things its way and will not bow to American interests.

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, said at the meeting where Clinton announced the new military aid that the “prophets of doom” who predict an irreconcilable split between the US and Pakistan are “dead wrong.” But Mr. Qureshi also used his Washington visit to lay down red lines for the partnership, saying at a speech earlier in the week at the Brookings Institution, “Pakistan’s sovereignty is and will remain nonnegotiable.”

That comment appeared to refer to recent tensions between the two countries over a stepped-up US campaign of unmanned drone attacks against suspected militant havens in Pakistan’s northwest, and more specifically over a recent US helicopter attack that killed three Pakistani soldiers.

Pakistan closed a crucial border crossing for nearly two weeks over the attack, disrupting NATO supply lines into Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s military and civilian government have said that the country does not have the money or military equipment for launching large-scale offensives against militant havens. The US offer of a multiyear, multibillion-dollar military aid package – which would run from 2012 to 2016 and would be graduated in terms of the money offered – appears designed to answer that complaint and perhaps quiet that excuse for inaction.

But the US Congress has become increasingly impatient with Pakistan’s reluctance to go after groups like Al Qaeda, leading some analysts to anticipate resistance to another aid package to Pakistan. Congress last year approved a five-year, $7.5 billion package of civilian aid aimed at boosting development and strengthening Pakistan’s fragile democratic institutions.

Announcement of the new military aid package coincided with confirmation from Obama administration officials that existing US military assistance is to be cut off from a number of Pakistani Army units suspected of having committed abuses including torture and summary executions. The suspension of funding was issued in accordance with the so-called Leahy Amendment (after Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont), which bars US military assistance to units committing abuses.

“This will turn into a very, very messy fight in Congress,” says Innocent of the Cato Institute. “After a decade, there is just a lot of frustration with the effort Pakistan has put forward.”

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CNN says Pakistan protecting Osama bin Laden; France on alert for terrorist ... - Christian Science Monitor

Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are living comfortably in northwest Pakistan under the protection of members of the nation's intelligence service, a top NATO official has reportedly told CNN.

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The claim comes amid fresh warnings by Saudi intelligence of terror attacks targeting Europe – especially France – by the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an offshoot of Mr. bin Laden's group. A British official said Monday that the United Kingdom faces a "very serious threat" of terrorist attacks, reported Agence France-Presse, while the United States and Japan earlier this month both issued travel alerts for Europe.

The latest report could add pressure on Pakistan to eliminate safe havens on its territory for Al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

CNN quoted an anonymous NATO official saying that the top two leaders of Al Qaeda were living close to each other, but not together, in houses in northwest Pakistan, protected by locals and members of Pakistani intelligence. "Nobody in al Qaeda is living in a cave," the official told CNN.

The official said the general region where bin Laden is likely to have moved around in recent years ranges from the mountainous Chitral area in the far northwest near the Chinese border, to the Kurram Valley which neighbors Afghanistan's Tora Bora, one of the Taliban strongholds during the US invasion in 2001....

The area that the official described covers hundreds of square miles of some of the most rugged terrain in Pakistan inhabited by fiercely independent tribes.

Pakistan's interior minister denied Monday that bin Laden and Zawahiri are on Pakistani soil and said such reports had proven false in the past, according to CNN.

But their group, Al Qaeda, has remained active around the world. Saudi intelligence officials have issued fresh warnings of a possible attack in Europe, warnings that will likely add to weeks of jitters triggered by vague reports of possible attacks planned for Europe.

The latest warnings were made public in a radio interview Sunday with French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux, who said that "several days" earlier, Saudi intelligence informed France that the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was "active or about to become active in Europe,"
according to Al Jazeera.

"This is not about overestimating the threat or underestimating it," he told France's RTL Radio. "I am indicating, based on all these elements, that the threat is real."

Hortefeux said, in the spirit of "informing, not alarming" the public, that the government had received a warning days earlier from Saudi intelligence about a terrorist threat to "the European continent, especially France," according to Le Figaro. "Our vigilance remains intact," he said, according to Le Figaro.

Hortefeux said the latest alert from Saudi intelligence followed other alerts, including a Sept. 9 Interpol warning, and a Sept. 16 alert warning of attacks by female suicide bombers, according to Le Monde. Hortefeux said an average of two terror plots against France were broken up per year, and 61 people were now in French prisons for involvement in terrorism.

France's current threat level is "reinforced red" (rouge renforce), the second-highest level after "scarlet red" (rouge ecarlate), according to Le Monde.

The Eiffel Tower was evacuated twice in recent months over terror fears. France has issued travel warnings to its citizens for the United Kingdom. The UK on Sunday updated travel advice for France and Germany, saying that there was a "high threat of terrorism" in those countries, "including in public places frequented by expatriates and foreign travelers," according to Agence France-Presse. The UK's threat level is "severe," also its second highest level.

Al Qaeda's Yemen-based offshoot has been reaching out to Muslims based in the Europe and the US with an English-language online magazine that encourages random attacks and instructions on bomb-making and do-it-yourself terror ideas such as welding steel blades onto a pick-up truck and driving into a crowd, according to Agence France-Presse.

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