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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (41961)	12/15/2001 3:22:39 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

Pakistan’s President, Pervez Musharraf has accepted a US request for a long-term presence at Jacobabad airbase, according to The Washington Post.Afzal Khan reporting today .. This will be the first American base in Pakistan since Badaber was dismantled over three decades ago. According to the paper, while the Jaccobabad base would be at the heart of the US military operations throughout the reconstruction work in Afghanistan, the US forces would also maintain their presence at the airfields in Pasni and Dalbandin. The Washington Post said the latest development reflects an increasingly close security ties between the United States and Pakistan. The United States plans to use the base as a forward operations platform for anti-terrorist operations and later as a platform from which to assist the reconstruction of Afghanistan. To that end, Pakistani officials said the US government also has informed them about plans to establish a separate military command to monitor the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Quoting Pakistani security forces, the paper said US officials have requested 40,000 metric tons of concrete to renovate the base in Jaccobabad, 300 miles north of Karachi. They have asked that a wall surrounding the base be raised four feet, and they want to construct air-conditioned barracks for the US troops in time for summer. Jaccobabad is known as the hottest city in Pakistan, with summertime temperatures soaring into the 100s. “In the foreseeable future, Jaccobabad airbase would continue to serve as a key facility for the US military’s peacekeeping or counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan,” the Paper quoted an unnamed Pakistani military official familiar with discussions on the subject. The US officials have asked that all but a few Pakistani liaison officers be withdrawn from the base. The US requests, particularly for air-conditioned barracks, underscore the long-term nature of Washington’s fight against terrorism in Afghanistan. “All indications we have is that the Americans are planning to stay in our region for quite some time,” said an aviation source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They are talking about a semi-permanent presence.” A senior aide to Pakistan’s President said that the United States and its coalition partners believed that it was necessary to maintain a presence in the region “to ensure that leftover Taliban pose no terrorist threat to the political and physical rebuilding of Afghanistan.” Jaccobabad has been chosen because it is relatively close to Afghanistan but also far from Pakistan’s nuclear weapons facilities in the far southwest. Hundreds of US Army soldiers already are housed in 42 aircraft hangars at the airbase. Because of inadequate power supplies, the US forces experienced heating problems during the cool winter evenings, officials said. Over the next four months, the barracks will be built for the troops, officials said. The building plans at Jaccobabad illustrate the increasingly close security cooperation between Washington and Islamabad. US security personnel have operated in Pakistan before, but their presence was largely restricted to intelligence or communication experts. Analysts said that no more than 500 US military personnel were stationed in Pakistan when Field Marshal Ayub Khan allowed the CIA to establish a massive electronic intelligence-gathering facility at Badaber, near Peshawar, in 1963. The United States used that site to monitor nuclear tests and other events in the Soviet Union and China until 1968, when Ayub Khan closed the base. Hundreds of US personnel also operated in Pakistan during the 1980s guerilla war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.