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

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (45622)	3/1/2004 2:33:59 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

EDITORIAL: Have they got Osama? Iran Radio has unleashed a flood of speculations over whether the Americans, with Pakistan’s help, have captured Osama bin Laden. The curious thing, however, is that Iran Radio reported the news in Pashto while the Farsi service ignored it; so did Iranian TV. The Pashto report said that the Americans had got Osama ‘some time ago’ but were keeping his capture under wraps to time the ‘good news’ at home in such a way as to maximise President Bush’s chances for re-election in November this year. But the Americans have quickly denied the report. So too has Pakistan. However, the denials are as credible in the eyes of the people in Pakistan as the report itself. Pakistan had timed its operation in South Waziristan with the promised American Spring Operation in southern and eastern Afghanistan. Islamabad first denied that the campaign was linked to America’s get-Osama operation, but one cannot miss the subtle variations between the statements made by the federal information minister Sheikh Rashid and the federal interior minister Faisal Saleh Hayat who claimed in Germany last week that Osama could soon be captured from his hideout ‘somewhere on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan’. Two weeks ago the word was out in the international press that Osama bin Laden had been cornered on the Pak-Afghan border on a mountain called Tooba Kakar and that he was trapped there together with the other two most wanted persons: Osama’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri and the Taliban leader Mulla Umar. It was also reported later that after Pakistan initiated its own operation in South Waziristan, Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahiri were forced out of their hideout and fled into the Paktika province of Afghanistan. It was agued that the Pakistani operation was nothing but a net to block Osama and his cohorts from getting out of the trap. The Iranian intent seems to spread the word about bin Laden among the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the hope of creating problems for the government of Pakistan. Otherwise the report would have been broadcast in Farsi as well. One can’t miss the effect the word about Osama bin Laden’s arrest has had in Pakistan. The Pakistan army has been attacked in Wana where it was camped after an earlier operation. The MMA leader, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, has joined his colleagues in the alliance in denouncing the South Waziristan operation and has claimed that he can rally the people of Pakistan behind the tribals whose homes have allegedly been attacked by the army. It may be recalled that before the focus shifted to Osama bin Laden, similar speculations about the arrest of Saddam Hussein were floated from various quarters including Iran. Important commentators in Pakistan said on TV that the Americans had captured Saddam but were keeping him for an opportune moment best meant to benefit President Bush in the elections. That is why one cannot ignore the urgency expressed in the American press about the need to get Osama bin Laden before November 2004 so that President Bush can be seen to fulfil his pledge to the people of America to avenge the terrorism of 9/11. * dailytimes.com.pk