War on terrorism – ‘Nawaz, party not on same page’

LAHORE – Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif had told US senators in a meeting that he wanted to help the government eradicate the menace of terrorism, but some members of his party did not share the same views, India’s The Hindu newspaper said in a report, based on cables released by WikiLeaks, on Wednesday.
The report said that Bryan Hunt, principal officer at the US Consulate, in a cable sent on December 3, 2008 (181158: confidential), detailed a conversation with Ali Haroon Shah, PML-N member and a former legislator in the provincial assembly, who said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had started a “blame game” before any evidence appeared.
Shah said India had many insurgent groups, any of which could have carried out the attack, the report stated. The report said that a cable (181951: confidential) sent by the US Consulate in Lahore’s Acting Principal Officer Clinton Taylor on December 9, 2008 described how the PML-N leader told a visiting delegation of US Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham that he had listened to the phone call made by one of the attackers to an Indian TV channel, and even though the individual claimed he was Indian, he had heard a Pakistani accent.
The report said that Nawaz seemed to have no doubts right at the beginning that the attackers were Pakistani, while some influential Pakistanis believed that “south Indian” men had carried out the Mumbai attacks and lashed out at India for blaming Pakistan. At that December 6 meeting, however, Sharif showed none of the ambivalence about the origin of the attackers that he later resorted to in keeping with the mood of denial in Pakistan, said the report.
“The people involved were from this country – I am convinced,” the report quoted Sharif as saying. “We must take strictest action against those elements,” he said, and once India produced concrete evidence, “we should proceed whole hog,” he declared, according to the report. In doing so, Sharif was perhaps also trying to clear the US perception of him as a politician with links to Islamists, and therefore not a trustworthy partner in the “war on terror”, the newspaper reported.
The former premier seemed to have been only too aware that to secure his prospects as a future leader of the country, he needed to keep on the right side of the US, said the report. Nawaz told the senators that his party had acted responsibly with the ruling Pakistan People’s Party to fight terrorism, the report stated. He recounted that former president Pervez Musharraf had exiled both him and PPP leader Benazir Bhutto, and he was “amazed when President Bush provided his support for a dictator”, the report quoted him as saying.
Sharif recounted that in his time as prime minister he had offered Pakistan’s support for the Gulf War and discussed in great detail with erstwhile US president Bill Clinton how to deal with extremist forces in Afghanistan, said the report. “Who could be more committed to fight against terrorism?” the report quoted him as saying. He recalled his part in signing the Lahore Declaration with former Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but on the other hand, General Musharraf had launched the Kargil operation, which Sharif described as “the biggest blunder he committed”, said the report.
The report quoted Sharif as saying that his party had refrained from using India to score political points and the PML-N had strongly condemned the Mumbai attacks, and if there was evidence to prove Pakistani links, “we must take action.” The people responsible for the Mumbai attacks, Sharif said according to the report, “are also operating in Pakistan – we face those forces here.”
The report said further that he mentioned the assassination of Benazir Bhutto the year before, his own narrow escape from bullets fired at his election rally on the same day as her killing, the Marriott bombing in September 2008, and a ghastly bombing in Peshawar a day before his meeting with the senators.
The report said that Sharif underlined his commitment to help the government “eradicate this menace” but some members of his party did not share the same views. Bryan Hunt, principal officer at the US Consulate, in a cable sent on December 3, 2008 (181158: confidential), detailed a conversation with Ali Haroon Shah, PML-N member and a former legislator in the provincial assembly, who said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had started a “blame game” before any evidence appeared, said the report.
Shah said India had many insurgent groups, any of which could have carried out the attack, the report stated. The report stated that Hunt had written that he had met Lahore High Court judge Bilal Khan. The judge welcomed the December 1 statement from the White House saying the US had found no evidence to indicate that the Pakistan government had planned the attacks, said the report. The judge took this as absolving “all Pakistanis of responsibility,” the report quoted Hunt as writing.
The diplomat clarified to the judge that while there was no indication that the Pakistan government had a hand in the attacks, groups operating in Pakistan, specifically in Punjab, were the most likely culprits, said the report. A senior Lahore lawyer who was present at the meeting told him that from the photographs, the attackers “looked south Indian,” said the report.
With some foresight, the report stated, Hunt commented that “the innocence felt by most Punjabis will make it difficult to crack down on Pakistani perpetrators.”