Pakistan may lose USD 1.5 billion financial aid from US

Pakistan Blackmail to Extort Money From western Countries in the name of Terror Is Over:

Pakistan may loose USD 1.5 billion financial aid from the US as a Congressional bill, which was set to debate the 10 years package,has lapsed, a news report said on Saturday.

The Pakistani daily Dawn said in a report that the Biden-Lugar Bill, which would have provided as much as USD 1.5 billion to Pakistan over a period of 10 years expired in 2008 along with the term of the US Congress which was to debate it.

The bill must now be reintroduced by the Senate, it said quoting Pakistani Urdu-language daily Jang.

However, Pakistan's US envoy Hussain Haqqani was quoted as saying by the private television channel Geo that the bill had not been sidelined and remained an integral component of future Pak-US relations.

He underlined that the lapsing of the bill was a technicality of the transition of power within the US and the bill would soon be reintroduced by the US Senate.

The aid through the Biden-Luger bill is desperately needed to boost Pakistan's faltering economy, which has been badly hit by the unrest in the Islamic nation.

Soon after taking office, the Obama administration has indicated that the US will hold Pakistan accountable for security in the border region with Afghanistan.

The Pakistani government is desperately in need of financial support to boost its faltering economy.

Pakistan Goverment Pakistan Army Pakistan Intelligency Supports Terrorism

Paksitan Terror Structure : Paksitan Army, Paksitan Intelligence, Paksitani goverment, Taliban AlQaeda

The United States is dusting off a long-discarded proposal to declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism. Obama government, sources said, contingent on corrective actions taken in the meantime by Islamabad to the satisfaction of India, US and other countries affected by Pakistan's toxic export of death.

US intelligence circles are now re-evaluating Pakistan's contribution to the war on terror, and the ISI's dominant role in the country and its ties with jihadi outfits, at the behest of the Bush administration. The White House itself lost faith in the Pakistan Army's bonafides several months ago which led to Washington's decision to withdraw support to military ruler Pervez Musharraf and back a new civilian government, officials and congressional aides who spoke on background explained. The decision to dump Musharraf was taken at vice-president Dick Cheney recommendation, they added, because of evidence that Pakistan was continuing to help Taliban elements attacking Nato forces.

Bush administration was even more convinced that the Pakistani Army and its intelligence arm ISI, who still calls the shots in Islamabad, are continuing their toxic terror policies. But firm action against them is constrained by both the transition phase in Washington and the US dependence on Pakistan to maintain supply lines to its troops in land-locked Afghanistan. Officials are now re-examining options in this regard, particularly US leverage against Islamabad if Pakistan considers interdiction strategies.

Pakistan came close to being named a state sponsor of terrorism in 1992 when then Secretary of State James Baker charged then prime minister Nawaz Sharif of supporting terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. The then US envoy in Islamabad Nicholas Platt conveyed to Sharif that "we (US) are very confident of our information that your intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, and elements of the Army are supporting Kashmiri and Sikh militants who carry out acts of terrorism... This support takes the form of providing weapons, training and assistance in infiltration ... We're talking about direct, covert support from the Government of Pakistan."

In his talking points, Platt continued: "Our information is certain. It does not come from the Indian Government. Please consider the serious consequences to our relationship if this support continues... If the situation persists, the Secretary of State may find himself required by law to place Pakistan in the U.S.G. [United States Government] State sponsors of terrorism list... You must take concrete steps to curtail assistance to militants and not allow their training camps to operate in Pakistan or Azad Kashmir."

The situation was defused by Sharif government removing then D-G of ISI Javed Nasir even as Washington was going through a transition phase (from Bush Sr to Clinton).

But it now appears that the ISI has cranked up its policy from mere infiltration and support to outright commando style attacks.

Despite a soft-line adopted by Bush administration in public to the benefit of doubt to Pakistan's civilian government and spur it into action, Washington has little doubt that the terrorist attack on Mumbai was sponsored and planned with state support, US officials are saying privately. One things is certain; this was not a run-of-the mill LeT operation.

"I think this event looks a lot more like a classical Special Forces or commando-style raid than it does like any terrorist attack we've seen before," David Kilcullen, a counter insurgency military analyst who served as an advisor to Gen. Davis Petraeus tells Fareed Zakaria in the upcoming edition of his program GPS, articulating what US officials are saying in private. "No al-Qaida-linked terrorist group and certainly never Lashkar-e-Taiba has mounted a maritime raid of this type or complexity."

The US intelligence community believes that hijacking a fishing vessel, infiltrating via the sea, via inflatable boat, launching diversionary attacks designed to pull the first responders out of the way of the subsequent follow on groups that struck the Oberoi, the Taj Mahal, the Nariman Center and the equipment the terrorists carried and their attire were all in the vein of a covert special-forces raid rather than a traditional terrorist attack.

Pakistan's covert support to Taliban and al-Qaida elements on the country's western front has been extensively chronicled in US military circles in recent months, although political and strategic expediency has constrained Washington from speaking about it in public. In December 2006, Afghan security forces captured Sayed Akbar, an ISI officer, who had been tasked by Pakistani intelligence with serving as a conduit to al-Qaida, which was operating along the Afghan-Pakistani border in the Kunar region.

Debriefed by US and Afghan officials, Akbar said he had escorted Osama bin Laden as he traveled from Afghanistan's Nuristan province into Pakistan's Chitral district, prompting US to rush an FBI team there. Afghan President Hamid Karzai also accused Pakistan around the same time of sheltering Taliban leader Mullah Omar in Quetta and said he had even provided GPS coordinates and phone numbers of the hideout to Pakistan's military government but it did not act.

A few months later a US commander, Lieutenant Colonel Chris Nash, who worked with the Afghan police, made a widely discussed slide presentation on his return to Washington, saying "ISI involved in direct support to many enemy operations ... classification prevents further discussion of this point." The support included "training, funding, [and] logistics," he added.

But the most damning, and most recent, piece of evidence came after the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul when US intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack. The messages, US officials said later, indicated that the ISI officers involved in the bombings were not "renegades," or "stateless actors," and "their actions might have been authorized by superiors."

Washington now believes that is also the case with Mumbai, which is why, notwithstanding a soft public stance, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has conveyed to President Zardari what her predecessor Baker told Nawaz Sharif: Pakistan is on track to being declared a state sponsor of terrorism if it does not act.

It was because of this long history of Pakistan's corrosive terrorist record that an outraged Rice dismissed Islamabad's request for evidence this time, saying, there is a "lot of information about what happened here, a lot of information... And so this isn't an issue of sharing evidence."

Pakistani Terror In Kashmir : LeT commander killed in Sopore

A local area commander of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Abu Hamza, was killed in Sopore, J&K, on Wednesday in a pinpointed intelligence-driven operation by the Army and J&K police. Hamza, which the intelligence agencies suspect is no more than a “famous” alias being used by the neutralised Pakistani terrorist, was leading the LeT’s operations in Sopore.

Operating from a house in Amargarh village of Sopore, he was known to have limited his movements to a very small area. He had been active in Sopore for the last 8-9 months, intelligence sources told ET. The security agencies had been tracking him for sometime now and it was their tip-off regarding his presence at a residential area in Amargarh that led the Army and J&K police to launch a joint operation to nab him.

Sopore SP Bhim Sen Tuti said that one Army personnel of 52 Rashtriya Rifles was killed in the 16-hour encounter. “Three security men also received injuries ,” he added.

Samjhauta passengers smuggling Rs 70cr worth heroin : Pakistani Citizens as Drug Smugglers

About 14 kgs of heroin being smuggled from Pakistan in the trans-border Samjhauta Express were seized and four passengers of the train arrested for allegedly carrying the contraband, having a street value of Rs 70 crore, officials said here on Tuesday.

Acting on a tip-off, Indian customs officials carried out special frisking of some suspected passengers when the train arrived from Pakistan at the Attari railway station last evening.

During the frisking, the officials seized 14 kg of heroin from four Indian passengers, including two women. The women were identified as Saddiqiquan, a resident of Mazaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh and Bundila while their male co-passengers were Akhtar Abbas and Ali Baksh, residents of Bulandshahr. All of them went to Pakistan on January 19 2009.

During the interrogation, they said that the consignment of heroin was given to them at the Lahore railway station to deliver to a person who would contact to them on reaching India, according to customs officials.

The four are being questioned to extract information about the persons who were to collect the consignment on the Indian side, they said.

After the November 26 terror attacks in Mumbai, Indian security agencies have enhanced frisking at the Attari railway station and the Attari check post on the land transit route.

RDX being smuggled into India with cement from Pak

RDX being smuggled into India with cement from Pak : World Should discard Pakistani Products as Explosives smuggled by pakistan are used for Terrorism.

Police and security agencies here have got a specific alert — from the police of a North Indian state — about RDX having been smuggled into the country as part of a cement consignment from Pakistan and the target being an oil refinery.

Officials said the high alert sounded at vital installations like railway stations and hotels in Mumbai
last December was not a reaction to the 26/11 carnage but had its basis in this specific intelligence input.

Officials also told TOI that more RDX could be coming in as part of cement or other consignments. But the alert did not name any refinery that was supposed to be the target.

That explained the reaction by Delhi Police and Mumbai Police during the days following the terror attacks on Mumbai. The two closest refineries to Delhi are at Panipat and Mathura. But most of the major refineries are near the coast, including those at Vishakhapatnam, Paradip and Jamnagar.

The alert also mentioned railways as a possible “soft target''.

Several ports, especially those in Vishakhapatnam and Ennore (Tamil Nadu), were also on a high alert on Tuesday. Shipping officials met home ministry and IB officials, agencies reported.

ATS joint commissioner of police Rakesh Maria was not available for comment and state intelligence chief D Shivanandan said he was not privy to the information.

Security was stepped up at all railway stations in National Capital Region following the threat. The police deployed extra Quick Reaction Teams at New Delhi railway station and other stations. "After 26/11, every input is taken seriously,'' said Delhi Police's DCP (crime and railways), Neeraj Thakur.

US will attack Pak if it had intelligence: Biden

Sticking to the campaign pledge of US President Barack Obama, his deputy and Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday said the United States would not hesitate to launch attacks inside Pakistan, if it had actionable intelligence against "high-value" Al-Qaida targets.

"I can say that the President of the United States said during his campaign and in the debates that if there is an actionable target, of a high-level Al Qaida personnel, that he would not hesitate to use action to deal with that," Biden said in an interview to CBS news.

Biden was responding to a question referring to the latest US missile attack inside the tribal regions of Pakistan and if these attacks were approved by Obama or if he would continue with the Bush Administration's policy in this regard.

"It's my understanding that the president, the previous president, gave our US forces and the CIA permission to go across that border, to go after Al Qaida if it became necessary on the ground. Does President Obama -- will he continue that policy?" the CBS anchor asked.

"I can't speak to any particular attack. I can't speak to any particular action. It's not appropriate for me to do that," Biden said and then referred to the famous "actionable intelligence" statement made by Obama during campaign days.

He also declined to answer specific question if the Obama Administration would notify Islamabad before any cross-border movement. "I'm not going to respond to that question," he said.

Referring to his recent trip to Pakistan, Biden said: "The good news is that in my last trip -- and I've been to Pakistan many times and that region many times -- there is a great deal more cooperation going on now between the Pakistan military in an area called the FATA, the Federally Administered Territory -- Waziristan, North Waziristan -- all that area we hear about, that is really sort of ungovernable.

"Not sort of, it's been ungovernable for the Pakistani government. That's where the bad guys are hiding. That's where the Al Qaida folks are, and some other malcontents."

He said: "And so what we're doing is we're in the process of working with the Pakistanis to help train up their counter-insurgency capability of their military, and we're getting new agreements with them about how to deal with cross-border movements of these folks, so we're making progress."

Pakistani Terrorists shot dead in Noida Encounter : Pakistan Citizens Danger To World Community

The Uttar Pradesh Police on Sunday gunned down two alleged militants in an encounter at Noida, in Gautam Buddha Nagar district in the wee hours.

According to police sources the encounter which took place near Sector 97 they recovered two AK 47 rifles, two hand grenades and one bag from them.

Senior Superintendent of Police Navin Arora said that they had information that some persons were on their way from Ghaziabad near Lal Kuan in Maruti Van carrying arms and ammunitions on way to Delhi.

With the help of the Noida Police of Sector 39 and Sector 49, the ATS began chasing these persons and caught them near Amity Square.

In this encounter the alleged militants got injured and were taken to district hospital where they were declared dead.

One of the ATS sepoy Vinod Kumar was also injured. Police sources said that the two terrorists were from Pakistan and had plans to create tensions on the eve of Republic Day.