Thursday, August 12, 2004
US wants to train Pakistani Army again
* Wolfowitz praises Musharraf * Seeks $500m to recruit 'friendly militias'
WASHINGTON: US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said on Tuesday he favoured resuming training Pakistani officers in US military academies as a way of increasing US influence in the country's armed forces and reducing that of Islamic radicals.
"You don't promote military reform in a country like Pakistan by cutting off education for Pakistani military officers here and pushing them into the one alternative, which is the Islamic extremists," Wolfowitz told the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
"It's not as though if we leave them alone, nobody else will go out to recruit them," he added. "I think one of our problems in Pakistan today is that for too long we deprived ourselves of one of the most important instruments of influence in a country where the military is one of the most important institutions, and that is the contact between our military and their military," Wolfowitz said. The United States cut off military assistance to Pakistan in 1990 following the discovery of its programme to develop nuclear weapons.
He called President Pervez Musharraf "a friend of the US", adding that no leader had taken greater risks, or faced more daunting challenges from within and without.
Wolfowitz said the fight against terrorism was "a borderless conflict" and the 9/11 commission had identified three key front countries Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to make an important start.
In his testimony before the Congressional hearing on 9/11 report on 'terrorist sanctuaries', Wolfowitz praised President Musharraf's "extraordinary courage" to smoke out terrorists from Pakistani territory.
"Our success in Afghanistan would not have been possible without President Musharraf's decision to support us in the struggle against terrorism," he said.
Wolfowitz said the US victory in Afghanistan had strengthened President Musharraf's position in Pakistan. The recent arrests in Pakistan, he said had been important in capturing terrorists who were currently planning attacks against the United States.
He said the global nature of this conflict could be emphasised by the fact that "we have driven terrorists out of Afghanistan into Pakistan where they had been captured. "It has also led to terrorists elsewhere in London and Chicago," he added.
He said that the Pentagon had urged Congress to authorise 500 million dollars for building a network of friendly militias around the world to purge terrorists from "ungoverned areas". He also warned Muslim clerics against providing "ideological sanctuary" to radicals.
Wolfowitz told House Armed Services Committee that the money would be used "for training and equipping local security forces - not just armies - to counter terrorism and insurgencies".
No specific beneficiaries of the programme were named, but US officials have repeatedly expressed concern about Afghan-Pakistani border, Iraq, the Caucasus, Africa and the Philippines. In his testimony, Wolfowitz also suggested expanding the scope of the war on terror by including into the list of its possible targets radical Islamic clerics, who, in his words, provide "ideological sanctuary" to terrorism. In addition, he called for tightening control over international communication networks.
agencies
Daily Times - All Rights Reserved