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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House

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To: Mohan Marette who wrote (7227)	9/26/1999 7:23:00 PM
From: JPR	of 12475

dawn.com ISI chief briefs US on religious extremism By Shaheen Sehbai Pakistan's insider speaks to US congress WASHINGTON, Sept 25: The head of ISI has briefed a key congressional intelligence committee on the threat of religious extremism in Pakistan, Pakistani sources said here on Saturday. Lt-Gen Ziauddin, who is visiting Washington at the invitation of CIA, reportedly told the US legislators that Pakistan needed support to check radical religious elements. Many members of the intelligence committee asked the ISI chief about the prospects of what would happen to Pakistan's nuclear programme should the country face a political upheaval and the present set-up were shaken. They were worried about the "Talibanization" of Pakistan and the spectre of nuclear weapons and the missile technology being transferred to other rogue radical countries, in case an extremist Islamist regime took over in Pakistan. An unnamed S. Asian military source' has also been briefing US newspapers about the threats of 'mullahs' in Pakistan and a newspaper on Friday produced a special report, published on its front page, based on numerous quotes of this source. Pakistan's instability and crumbling economy are opening the doors to either a coup by the military or an attempt to seize power by the mullahs, the Washington Times said on Friday, quoting this South Asian military source. Congressional sources told Dawn that the picture presented by the ISI chief before the intelligence committee was so grim and scary that many members supported the public statement issued by the US warning against a military coup in Pakistan. Basically, these sources said, the US was not worried about an army coup but it was scared of a takeover by "fundamentalist Islamic radicals in the Pakistan army." Diplomatic observers said the US worked with army dictatorships around the world and it was comfortable with monarchies and autocratic governments in many parts of the world as long as they were on the US side. "What is feared was an army regime like that of Col Qadhafi or Saddam Hussain in a nuclear Pakistan." No official details of the visit of the ISI chief were available except that he was having "consultations" with his counterparts in the US. Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Friday said it was unprecedented that an ISI chief had visited the US before even the army chief had paid his first visit to Washington. She told reporters that none of the three ISI chiefs that she had during her two tenures as prime minister ever visited Washington on his own.

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