Turn off terror tap, US tells Pak CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ FRIDAY, JULY 15, 2005 10:01:40 AM ]
WASHINGTON: The United States has reiterated that Pakistan should close all militant training camps, amid a renewed focus on the country after the London blasts and reports of revival in infiltration of terrorists into India.
Responding to an expose in the Pakistani media about the resumption of terrorist training camps, a state department spokesman said "We have repeatedly made clear to the Pakistan government that it must continue its efforts to close all militant training camps and block all infiltration across the LoC in Kashmir."
"U.S government remains concerned about the activities of Kashmiri militant groups," he added.
While the statement implicitly acknowledged that Washington is aware of the terrorist camps in Pakistan, the official said he could not comment on specifics because it involved "intelligence issues."
US law enforcement authorities in the past few weeks have apprehended Pakistani-Americans who admitted to have trained in camps in Pakistan, a pattern that is also being revealed now in the case of the Pakistani-Brit suicide bombers who are said to have been trained and indoctrinated in Pakistan.
While U.S administration officials frequently ladle out praise to Pakistan's military-dominated government for its frontline role in the war on terrorism, western intelligence agencies are less sanguine.
Recently arrested terrorists have said they trained in camps in Wah Cantonment and Rawalpindi, both of which are centers of the Pakistani military.
While Pakistan's military government scoffs at such confessions and Indian charges in this regard, including a statement by India's foreign minister Natwar Singh last week that terror camps had been revived, the Pakistani news magazine Herald has done an expose about resumption of the camps.
The magazine reports that at least 13 major terrorist camps in the Mansehra region were revived during the first week of May this year. Camp managers claimed that trained militants as well as new aspirants are flocking to enlist for jihad.
Reporting that Pakistan government's crackdown on such terror camps "is now history," the magazine quotes a militant leader as saying terrorist organisations that were previously banned are now under a "regime of controlled freedom."
The US media too is beginning to discover that most terrorists arrested in the west over the past many years are of Pakistani extract or have had a connection with Pakistan -- not Iraq or Iran or Libya or Cuba or any of the usual suspects.
On Thursday, the New York Times ran an article chronicling the arrest of Pakistani radicals in U.S, Britain, Spain and Italy, among other countries.
The renewed focus in the west on Pakistan as the epicenter of terrorism comes ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to the U.S on Monday.
Although the visit has a heavy economic agenda, the issue of terrorism has suddenly acquired urgency following the London blasts and renewed fighting on the Kashmir border between infiltrators and Indian forces.
There is concern in Washington at statements from New Delhi that it may be constrained to call off peace talks with Pakistan if the camps and infiltration of terrorists is revived.