TEHRAN: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday accused Washington of planning to sabotage Pakistan’s nuclear facilities. He was speaking at a media conference in in the Iranian capital. Ahmadinejad also said Iran was ready to resume nuclear talks with world powers but would press ahead with its atomic activities, including uranium enrichment. “We have precise information that America wants to sabotage Pakistan’s nuclear facilities in order to control Pakistan and to weaken the government and the people of Pakistan,” the president said. “The United States would then use the UN Security Council and some other international bodies as levers to prepare the ground for a massive presence (in Pakistan) and weaken the national sovereignty of Pakistan,” he added, without elaborating. Pakistan is the only Islamic nation with nuclear weapons, and has close relations with Iran. In order to fight al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents in Pakistan, Washington has intensified its aerial operations in Iran’s southeastern neighbour. Pakistani Islamist groups have at the same time multiplied their assaults through Pakistani territory on military convoys and on transport and fuel convoys intended for Nato troops in Afghanistan. REFERENCE: US plans to sabotage Pak N-facilities: Ahmadinejad Wednesday, June 08, 2011 http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=6551&Cat=13&dt=6/8/2011
http://ejang.jang.com.pk/06-08-2011/Karachi/pic.asp?picname=1046.gif
Capital talk 8th june 2011 p1
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSnjx5Sh1Kk&feature=player_embedded
“The Northern Alliance is dominated by Tajiks and Uzbeks, and has 10,000 to 15,000 fighters,” report Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt in the New York Times, referring to the minority coalition that controls roughly 10 percent of the mostly Pashtun country. Primarily funded by Iran and Russia, the coalition “comprises three main groups with a number of smaller factions drifting in and out of its sphere of influence,” according to the BBC. “If the U.S. were to mount any kind of ground offensive, the Northern Alliance could prove indispensable.” The alliance suffered a devastating blow to its leadership only days before the strike on the World Trade Center, when its commander, Ahmed Shah Masood, was assassinated. Masood, a defense specialist, represented the ethnic Tajik Jamiat-I Islam movement, along with Afghanistan's ousted ethnic Tajik President Burhanuddin Rabbani, according to John Pike of Global Defense.org. A second group, Junbish-I Milli-yi Islam, is made up of mostly Uzbek warriors led by General Abdul Rashid Dostum, and are said to be some of the most heavily armed factions funded by the Russians. The final group within the Northern Alliance is Hizb-I Wahdat, a band of ethnic Hazara Shia, presumably supported by Iran, where a similar form of Shiite Islam is practiced that differs from the Sunni Islam adhered to by the Taliban. Dennis Kux, senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, says that two events triggered Iranian support for the anti-Taliban rebels. “In 1995 Tehran was upset by the Taliban capture of Heart in western Afghanistan, an area where Iranian influence has traditionally been strong,” Kux wrote in a Foreign Policy Association Headline Series about the region. “Tehran was even angrier in 1998 when the Taliban killed a number of Iranian diplomats during the capture of the northern city of Mazir-I-Sharif.” REFERENCE: Recently In Focus The Northern Alliance September 25, 2001 by Robert Nolan http://www.fpa.org/newsletter_info2583/newsletter_info_sub_list.htm?section=The%20Northern%20Alliance
Capital talk 8th june 2011 p2
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3vxch0Lz8hY#at=13
Former Pakistan prime minister and president of the Pakistan People's Party Benazir Bhutto, for the second successive day at a Washington, DC, news conference said that if she returns to power she would make available the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Bhutto's own party in a statement from Islamabad had said her answer had been distorted when she first made it. The PPP in a statement had said that Bhutto's answer was "not very different from what the current government says or any other responsible government in Pakistan would say," and added that "it is unfortunate that Mohtarma Bhutto's words are being distorted to imply that she promised any unlawful handing over of anyone to foreigners." "The PPP seeks to establish rule of law and there is no question of violating Pakistani or international law in relations to the freedom and personal rights of anyone, including Dr A Q Khan," the statement said. But on Wednesday, at a press conference organized by the Middle East Institute -- which had also organised her appearance on Capitol Hill on Tuesday -- and choreographed by the PPP's high-priced lobbying firm in Washington, Burston Marstellar, Bhutto reiterated that "while the People's Party would not grant the West access to A Q Khan, we will give access to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the international watchdog." REFERENCE: I will make Dr A Q Khan available to IAEA: Bhutto Aziz Haniffa in Washington, DC | September 27, 2007 | 09:24 IST http://www.rediff.com/cms/print.jsp?docpath=//news/2007/sep/27bhutto.htm
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9epDZkwpwo&feature=related
BENAZIR BHUTTO'S INTERVIEW -GEO- PART 2
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg8sZ9qCrJk&feature=related
While pointing out that it was "a hypothetical question because the IAEA has not asked for the access and the government of Pakistan has also stated yesterday that they have put the questions to Khan that the IAEA wanted. They have given the IAEA and the West the answers that A Q Khan gave," she said, "So we are moving now in the theory of hypothesis." "But if there is a situation than yes... giving access to the IAEA, but we certainly want to protect Pakistan's nuclear assets and we take pride in fact that Zulfikar Bhutto (former prime minister and her late father who was executed by the erstwhile military regime of President Mohammed Zia-ul Haq) was the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme." In her convoluted answer, that perhaps was both to appease the Bush administration and US lawmakers, who believe Khan should be handed over to the US or IAEA to be interrogated, and also not to raise the ire of the Pakistani people who still consider Khan a hero -- and hence the statement by the PPP claiming her answer on the first day was distorted -- Bhutto declared, "We take pride in the fact that under my government, Pakistan's nuclear assets remained safe and Pakistan also acquired missile technology." REFERENCE: I will make Dr A Q Khan available to IAEA: Bhutto Aziz Haniffa in Washington, DC | September 27, 2007 | 09:24 IST http://www.rediff.com/cms/print.jsp?docpath=//news/2007/sep/27bhutto.htm
Benazir Bhutto was committed to give IAEA access to Dr.AQ Khan
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD7ilqVuO20
BENAZIR AND A.Q. KHAN -CONTROVERSIAL REMARKS ON PAKISTAN
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B26PMMPpmt0&feature=related
I always had issues with Pak intelligence team: Benazir
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNya1b-rFu0&feature=relmfu
"But my government also had a very clear policy of no export of nuclear technology," she emphasised, and added, "we believe that the protection of our nuclear assets lie in giving a clear signal that the government of Pakistan does not protect those who illegally proliferate." Bhutto kept repeating that "this is a hypothetical question," and said, "The IAEA has not made any requests to me." However, she reiterated, "If under a PPP government the IAEA makes a request to give them access to A Q Khan, we certainly will do that because the People's Party will not cover up or collude in the cover up of proliferation activities." This was also the second successive day in which she had insinuated that the Pakistani military was involved in the illegal weapons technology export blackmarket that was run by Khan, although he was not acting alone and was likely part of a larger conspiracy. "We believe that Pakistan's nuclear assets will only be safe if we can signal to the world community that Pakistan is a law abiding nation," she said. "The A Q Khan affair has harmed Pakistan and it has harmed our nuclear assets. It has given the impression that we are a rogue nation," Bhutto added. "It is a wrong notion and it is unfair to the people of Pakistan," she said and then in some political pandering, obviously both for domestic and international consumption, the exiled leader, declared, "I want to send a message of the real Pakistan, of the great people of Pakistan, who do not believe in illegal activities and who do not want to export nuclear technology, who did not want�proliferation, but who acquired nuclear technology so that we could defend our homeland and parity with our neighbour India." She said that it was "because of that parity there has been no major war between India and Pakistan in such a long time." REFERENCE: I will make Dr A Q Khan available to IAEA: Bhutto Aziz Haniffa in Washington, DC | September 27, 2007 | 09:24 IST http://www.rediff.com/cms/print.jsp?docpath=//news/2007/sep/27bhutto.htm
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQoyoQpgeXM&feature=player_embedded
A series of military intelligence logs, mainly from 2005 and 2006, report that Tehran offered insurgency commanders financial bounties for each soldier killed in Afghanistan. Iranian intelligence officials are also accused of supplying cash and vehicles for car bombs. The claims are based on reports from local Afghan intelligence agents and highlight the background to American claims that Iran is waging a covert proxy war against Nato forces in Afghanistan. The reports, disclosed by Wikileaks, include claims that in 2005, Iran offered a group of eight Taliban leaders more than $1,700 in bounty for each Afghan soldier killed and around $3,500 for each Afghan government official. Each of the Iran-based leaders were crossing into Afghanistan to raise recruits and prepare to attack coalition forces in Helmand and Oruzgan provinces. Another report in January 2005 claimed two Iranian intelligence agents had brought more than $200,000 to Afghanistan and handed it over to aides of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the former Afghan prime minister who now heads one of the most deadly factions in the insurgency. "The money was transferred to a 1990s model white Toyota Corolla station wagon. The money was hidden with various food stuffs. The Corolla was occupied by four members of the Hezb-E-Islami, Gulbuddin (HIG) terrorist organisation. The money was transported to an unknown location," the log claims. In March the following year, two more Iranian intelligence agents crossed the border to help Hekmatyar's faction plot further attacks. According to the report, 'Abdul Jalil', described as having a black beard and brown eyes and 'Ahmaddin', who had long hair and brown eyes, arrived in Afghanistan to help the Taliban and Hekmatyar's group "in carrying out terrorist attacks against the AFG governmental authorities and the CF [Coalition Forces] members." Later in 2006, another report claimed Hekmatyar's group had bought 200 cars from Iran and Pakistan to transform into car bombs. Although Hekmatyar had lived in Iran after the Taliban came to power in 1996, he was expelled by Iran in February 2002 after he called for resistance to coalition forces in Afghanistan. Although most of the reports date back to 2005 and 2006, one report from 2009 claimed a Taliban-led force of Afghan and foreign fighters had crossed into Afghanistan from Iran. Iran has consistently denied any support for the Taliban-led insurgency. Tehran has traditionally supported Afghanistan's minority Shi'ite Hazara population whose members were persecuted under Taliban rule. REFERENCE: Wikileaks Afghanistan: Iran accused of supporting Taliban attacks Iran is waging a secret campaign to arm, train and fund the Taliban-led insurgency against Nato forces in Afghanistan, according to American military reports. By Dean Nelson, South Asia Editor 8:30AM BST 27 Jul 2010 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7910926/Wikileaks-Afghanistan-Iran-accused-of-supporting-Taliban-attacks.html
Capital talk 8th june 2011 p4
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz8vzM0Hl4w&feature=player_embedded
Dick Cheney & Cover-Up!
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 [Courtesy: Wikipedia]Cheney Helped Cover-Up Nuclear Proliferation in 1989, So Pentagon Could Sell Pakistan Fighter Jets By JASON LEOPOLD
JASON LEOPOLD, Editor in ChiefThe Public RecordLos Angeles, CA [Courtesy: Plaxo]When news of Pakistan's clandestine program involving its top nuclear scientist selling rogue nations, such as Iran and North Korea, blueprints for building an atomic bomb was uncovered last month, the world's leaders waited, with baited breath, to see what type of punishment President Bush would bestow upon Pakistan's President Pervez Musharaff.
Bush has, after all, spent his entire term in office talking tough about countries and dictators that conceal weapons of mass destruction and even tougher on individuals who supply rogue nations and terrorists with the means to build WMDs. For all intents and purposes, Pakistan and Musharraf fit that description.
Remember, Bush accused Iraq of harboring a cache of WMDs, which was the primary reason the United States launched a preemptive strike there a year ago, and also claimed that Iraq may have given its WMDs to al-Qaeda terrorists and/or Syria, weapons that, Bush said, could be used to attack the U.S.
Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and top members of the administration reacted with shock when they found out that Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, spent the past 15 years selling outlaw nations nuclear technology and equipment. So it was sort of a surprise when Bush, upon finding out about Khan's proliferation of nuclear technology, let Pakistan off with a slap on the wrist. But it was all an act. In fact, it was actually a cover-up designed to shield Cheney because he knew about the proliferation for more than a decade and did nothing to stop it.
Like the terrorist attacks on 9-11, the Bush administration had mountains of evidence on Pakistan's sales of nuclear technology and equipment to nations vilified by the U.S._nations that are considered much more of a threat than Iraq_but turned a blind eye to the threat and allowed it to happen.
In 1989, the year Khan first started selling nuclear secrets on the black-market; Richard Barlow, a young intelligence analyst working for the Pentagon prepared a shocking report for Cheney, who was then working as Secretary of Defense under the first President Bush administration: Pakistan built an atomic bomb and was selling its nuclear equipment to countries the U.S. said was sponsoring terrorism.
But Barlow's findings, as reported in a January 2002 story in the magazine Mother Jones, were "politically inconvenient."
"A finding that Pakistan possessed a nuclear bomb would have triggered a congressionally mandated cutoff of aid to the country, a key ally in the CIA's efforts to support Afghan rebels fighting a pro-Soviet government. It also would have killed a $1.4-billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Islamabad," Mother Jones reported.
Ironically, Pakistan, critics say, was let off the hook last month so the U.S. could use its borders to hunt for al-Qaeda leader and 9-11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.
Cheney dismissed Barlow's report because he desperately wanted to sell Pakistan the F-16 fighter planes. Several months later, a Pentagon official was told by Cheney to downplay Pakistan's nuclear capabilities when he testified on the threat before Congress. Barlow complained to his bosses at the Pentagon and was fired.
"Three years later, in 1992, a high-ranking Pakistani official admitted that the country had developed the ability to assemble a nuclear weapon by 1987," Mother Jones reported. "In 1998, Islamabad detonated its first bomb."
During the time that Barlow prepared his report on Pakistan, Bryan Siebert an Energy Department analyst, was looking into Saddam Hussein's nuclear program in Iraq. Siebert concluded that "Iraq has a major effort under way to produce nuclear weapons," and said that the National Security Council should investigate his findings. But the Bush administration--which had been supporting Iraq as a counterweight to the Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran--ignored the report, the magazine reported.
"This was not a failure of intelligence," Barlow told Mother Jones. "The intelligence was in the system."
Bush has, after all, spent his entire term in office talking tough about countries and dictators that conceal weapons of mass destruction and even tougher on individuals who supply rogue nations and terrorists with the means to build WMDs. For all intents and purposes, Pakistan and Musharraf fit that description.
Remember, Bush accused Iraq of harboring a cache of WMDs, which was the primary reason the United States launched a preemptive strike there a year ago, and also claimed that Iraq may have given its WMDs to al-Qaeda terrorists and/or Syria, weapons that, Bush said, could be used to attack the U.S.
Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and top members of the administration reacted with shock when they found out that Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, spent the past 15 years selling outlaw nations nuclear technology and equipment. So it was sort of a surprise when Bush, upon finding out about Khan's proliferation of nuclear technology, let Pakistan off with a slap on the wrist. But it was all an act. In fact, it was actually a cover-up designed to shield Cheney because he knew about the proliferation for more than a decade and did nothing to stop it.
Like the terrorist attacks on 9-11, the Bush administration had mountains of evidence on Pakistan's sales of nuclear technology and equipment to nations vilified by the U.S._nations that are considered much more of a threat than Iraq_but turned a blind eye to the threat and allowed it to happen.
In 1989, the year Khan first started selling nuclear secrets on the black-market; Richard Barlow, a young intelligence analyst working for the Pentagon prepared a shocking report for Cheney, who was then working as Secretary of Defense under the first President Bush administration: Pakistan built an atomic bomb and was selling its nuclear equipment to countries the U.S. said was sponsoring terrorism.
But Barlow's findings, as reported in a January 2002 story in the magazine Mother Jones, were "politically inconvenient."
"A finding that Pakistan possessed a nuclear bomb would have triggered a congressionally mandated cutoff of aid to the country, a key ally in the CIA's efforts to support Afghan rebels fighting a pro-Soviet government. It also would have killed a $1.4-billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Islamabad," Mother Jones reported.
Ironically, Pakistan, critics say, was let off the hook last month so the U.S. could use its borders to hunt for al-Qaeda leader and 9-11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.
Cheney dismissed Barlow's report because he desperately wanted to sell Pakistan the F-16 fighter planes. Several months later, a Pentagon official was told by Cheney to downplay Pakistan's nuclear capabilities when he testified on the threat before Congress. Barlow complained to his bosses at the Pentagon and was fired.
"Three years later, in 1992, a high-ranking Pakistani official admitted that the country had developed the ability to assemble a nuclear weapon by 1987," Mother Jones reported. "In 1998, Islamabad detonated its first bomb."
During the time that Barlow prepared his report on Pakistan, Bryan Siebert an Energy Department analyst, was looking into Saddam Hussein's nuclear program in Iraq. Siebert concluded that "Iraq has a major effort under way to produce nuclear weapons," and said that the National Security Council should investigate his findings. But the Bush administration--which had been supporting Iraq as a counterweight to the Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran--ignored the report, the magazine reported.
"This was not a failure of intelligence," Barlow told Mother Jones. "The intelligence was in the system."
Seymour (Sy) Myron Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters. [Courtesy Wikipedia/The New Yorker]
Cheney went to great lengths to cover-up Pakistan's nuclear weaponry. In a New Yorker article On the Nuclear Edge published on March 29, 1993, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1993/03/29/1993_03_29_056_TNY_CARDS_000363214, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh quoted Barlow as saying that some high-ranking members inside the CIA and the Pentagon lied to Congress about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal so as not to sacrifice the sale of the F-16 fighter planes to Islamabad, which was secretly equipped to deliver nuclear weapons. Pakistan's nuclear capabilities and the had become so grave by the spring of 1990 that then CIA deputy director Richard Kerr said the Pakistani nuclear threat was worse than! the Cuban Missile crisis in the 1960s.
"It was the most dangerous nuclear situation we have ever faced since I've been in the U.S. government," Kerr said in an interview with Hersh. "It may be as close as we've come to a nuclear exchange. It was far more frightening than the Cuban missile crisis."
Presently, Kerr is leading the CIA's review of prewar intelligence into the Iraqi threat cited by Bush.
Still, in l989 Cheney and others in the Pentagon and the CIA continued to hide the reality of Pakistan's nuclear threat from members of Congress. Hersh explained in his lengthy New Yorker article that reasons behind the cover-up "revolves around the fact... that the Reagan Administration had dramatically aided Pakistan in its pursuit of the bomb."
"President Reagan and his national-security aides saw the generals who ran Pakistan as loyal allies in the American proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan: driving the Russians out of Afghanistan was considered far more important than nagging Pakistan about its building of bombs. The Reagan Administration did more than forgo nagging, however; it looked the other way throughout the mid-nineteen-eighties as Pakistan assembled its nuclear arsenal with the aid of many millions of dollars' worth of restricted, high-tech materials bought inside the United States. Such purchases have always been illegal, but Congress made breaking the law more costly in 198! 5, when it passed the Solarz Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act (the amendment was proposed by former Representative Stephen J. Solarz, Democrat of New York), providing for the cutoff of all military and economic aid to purportedly non-nuclear nations that illegally export or attempt to export nuclear-related materials from the United States."
"The government's ability to keep the Pakistani nuclear-arms purchases in America secret is the more remarkable because (since 1989) the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Department (under Cheney) have been struggling with an internal account of illegal Pakistani procurement activities, given by a former. intelligence officer named Richard M. Barlow," Hersh reported. "Barlow... was dismayed to learn, at first hand, that State Department and agency officials were engaged in what he concluded was a pattern of lying to and misleading Congress about Pakistan's nuclear-purchasing activities."
Hersh interviewed scores of intelligence and administration officials for his March 1993 New Yorker story and many of those individuals confirmed Barlow's claims that Pakistani nuclear purchases was deliberately withheld from Congress by Cheney and other officials, for fear of provoking a cutoff in military and economic aid that would adversely affect the prosecution of the war in Afghanistan.
It seems that today, Cheney is advising President Bush to deal with Pakistan's nuclear proliferation much in the same way he did more than a decade ago. Give the country a pass, lie to the public about the seriousness of the matter and tell Pakistan you'll turn the other cheek if the country agrees to allow U.S. troops to use its borders to hunt for Bin Laden before the November election. Courtesy: Counterpunch [March 2004] URL: http://www.counterpunch.org/leopold03082004.html
"It was the most dangerous nuclear situation we have ever faced since I've been in the U.S. government," Kerr said in an interview with Hersh. "It may be as close as we've come to a nuclear exchange. It was far more frightening than the Cuban missile crisis."
Presently, Kerr is leading the CIA's review of prewar intelligence into the Iraqi threat cited by Bush.
Still, in l989 Cheney and others in the Pentagon and the CIA continued to hide the reality of Pakistan's nuclear threat from members of Congress. Hersh explained in his lengthy New Yorker article that reasons behind the cover-up "revolves around the fact... that the Reagan Administration had dramatically aided Pakistan in its pursuit of the bomb."
"President Reagan and his national-security aides saw the generals who ran Pakistan as loyal allies in the American proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan: driving the Russians out of Afghanistan was considered far more important than nagging Pakistan about its building of bombs. The Reagan Administration did more than forgo nagging, however; it looked the other way throughout the mid-nineteen-eighties as Pakistan assembled its nuclear arsenal with the aid of many millions of dollars' worth of restricted, high-tech materials bought inside the United States. Such purchases have always been illegal, but Congress made breaking the law more costly in 198! 5, when it passed the Solarz Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act (the amendment was proposed by former Representative Stephen J. Solarz, Democrat of New York), providing for the cutoff of all military and economic aid to purportedly non-nuclear nations that illegally export or attempt to export nuclear-related materials from the United States."
"The government's ability to keep the Pakistani nuclear-arms purchases in America secret is the more remarkable because (since 1989) the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Department (under Cheney) have been struggling with an internal account of illegal Pakistani procurement activities, given by a former
Hersh interviewed scores of intelligence and administration officials for his March 1993 New Yorker story and many of those individuals confirmed Barlow's claims that Pakistani nuclear purchases was deliberately withheld from Congress by Cheney and other officials, for fear of provoking a cutoff in military and economic aid that would adversely affect the prosecution of the war in Afghanistan.
It seems that today, Cheney is advising President Bush to deal with Pakistan's nuclear proliferation much in the same way he did more than a decade ago. Give the country a pass, lie to the public about the seriousness of the matter and tell Pakistan you'll turn the other cheek if the country agrees to allow U.S. troops to use its borders to hunt for Bin Laden before the November election.
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