QUALIFIED SUPPORT

Pakistan agrees to aid US

By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Globe Staff, 9/14/2001

SLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan is prepared to cooperate fully with the United States to fight back against Tuesday's terror attacks if Washington provides convincing evidence it is targeting the right people, top Pakistani officials said yesterday.

The pledge is strategically and symbolically invaluable to the United States' effort to build a global coalition to root out the perpetrators of the attack and any states that aided them. Pakistan borders Afghanistan and has been the main supporter of that country's Taliban regime, which has allowed Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect, to take refuge there.

In an interview last night with The Boston Globe and The Los Angeles Times, Major General Rashid Qureshi, spokesman for President Pervez Musharraf, said Pakistan is siding with the United States despite the ''big possibility'' of reprisals by Muslim extremists at home and overseas.

Qureshi said the fight against terrorism is more important than any friend or neighbor. ''We feel there is the right and the just, and we will support the right and the just,'' he said, even if it hurts Islamabad's interest in having a friendly, stable neighbor in Afghanistan.

Over the past two days, Pakistani leaders had debated intensively how far to assist the United States - which many here resent as a fair-weather friend - in a possible campaign against Afghanistan, an important neighbor on Pakistan's western border counterbalancing a hostile India on its east.

A Pakistani source with access to top policymakers said a decision was made to give the United States ''carte blanche ... We will support you all the way'' against whoever is proven to be behind the attacks.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan said last night that the United States had not offered Pakistan any incentives - such as the lifting of sanctions or new aid packages - or threats to gain its cooperation.

The decision to cooperate is risky for Islamabad. It could unleash a domestic political backlash from those who believe Pakistan is bending to superpower bullying. It could also bring reprisals from extremists furious at a perceived betrayal by a Muslim state.

Pakistani leaders have not forgotten that when Egypt made peace with Israel, then-President Anwar Sadat was assassinated and Cairo endured a series of terror attacks. That campaign was renewed after Egypt sided with the United States in the Gulf War.

Domestic opinion could be just as hard to control. In August 1998, when the United States launched dozens of cruise missiles against bin Laden across Pakistan's airspace without prior permission, an indignant Pakistani public protested. As the missiles were being launched, a US general informed his Pakistani counterpart of the event over dinner.

There is a widespread belief here that in the past, Washington has left Islamabad swinging in the wind when it needed help, despite Pakistan's decades as a loyal bulwark against communism. Pakistanis have never forgiven the United States for effectively siding with East Pakistan and India in the 1971 war that divided this country, and they resent that the United States imposed economic and military sanctions after the end of the Afghan war and the fall of the Soviet Union.

Still, Qureshi predicted that the magnitude and horror of Tuesday's ''cold-blooded'' attacks will sway Pakistani public opinion in favor of aiding the United States.

As to what moved Pakistan's leaders, Khan said, ''Our position has nothing to do with a carrot or stick. Our position was clearly stated by the president of Pakistan within one hour after the attack.''

The Afghan capital of Kabul, meanwhile, appeared to be bracing for an attack. Half a dozen planeloads of foreign aid workers, diplomats, and journalists left the city for Islamabad on the advice of their governments, following a similar exodus of foreign relief workers who crossed into Pakistan Wednesday. The United Nations withdrew all its foreign employees from Kabul.

Left behind were aid workers from the relief group Shelter Now - two Americans, four Germans, and two Australians - who are on trial for allegedly preaching Christianity to Muslims, a crime in Afghanistan.

''We'll be working with the Taliban authorities here to try to get our citizens released,'' said US Consul General David Donahue.

In Islamabad, the army closed the airport to commercial flights for 21/2 hours before dawn today for movement of military equipment, aviation sources said. Two flights were diverted.

It was not clear whether the closure was linked to possible assistance for US retaliation on Afghanistan.

Pakistani intelligence sources have said that bin Laden and Taliban leaders went into hiding following the attacks on the United States, and that Taliban weapons and installations have been camouflaged.

This story ran on page A27 of the Boston Globe on 9/14/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.