Author: Agencies
Publication: The Times of India
Date: June 16, 2004
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/742828.cms
An official report into the September
11, 2001 attacks said on Wednesday that Pakistan helped the Taliban regime
in Afghanistan to give a haven to al-Qaeda in the face of international
pressure.
The report from the official investigation
into the attacks by al-Qaeda on New York and Washington said that Pakistan
broke with the Taliban only after September 11, even though it knew the
Afghan militia was hiding al- Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
"The Taliban's ability to provide
bin Laden a haven in the face of international pressure and UN sanctions
was significantly facilitated by Pakistani support," the report said.
Pakistan benefitted from the Taliban-al-Qaeda
relationship, as bin Laden's camps trained and equipped fighters for Pak-sponsored
activities in Kashmir, according to the report.
In another revelation, the panel
said that Saddam Hussein had little to do with al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden
did meet a top Iraqi official in 1994 but that it found "no credible evidence"
of a link between Iraq and al-Qaida in attacks against the US.
In a report based on research and
interviews by the commission staff, the panel said that bin Laden explored
possible cooperation with Saddam Hussein even though he opposed the Iraqi
leader's secular regime.
A senior Iraqi intelligence official
reportedly met with bin Laden in 1994 in Sudan, the panel found, and bin
Laden "is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as
well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded".
"There have been reports that contacts
between Iraq and al-Qaida also occurred after bin Laden had returned to
Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative
relationship," the report said.
"Two senior bin Laden associates
have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qaida and Iraq."
The panel's findings appear to contradict
Vice-President Dick Cheney's assertion on Monday that Saddam had "long-established
ties" with al- Qaida.
In making the case for war in Iraq,
officials of President George W. Bush's administration frequently cited
what they said were Saddam's decade-long contacts with al-Qaida operatives.
They stopped short of claiming that Iraq was directly involved in the September
11 attacks, but critics say Bush officials left that impression with the
American public.
The commission's report was released
at the beginning of the panel's final two-day hearing on the development
of the September 11 plot and the emergency response by the Federal Aviation
Administration and US air defenses.
"We're going to talk about the evolution
of al-Qaida and how they moved from one type of organization in the late
1980s to a more fast-acting, poisonous organization in the 1990s, more
spread out and dispersed," Democratic commissioner Timothy Roemer said
before the hearing.
"We'll be looking at the timeline
as to whether or not we had an opportunity to deflect any of the airliners,
and how decisions were made by the highest people in government," he said.
In its report, the commission reiterated
an oft-repeated warning by the Bush administration, saying al-Qaida remains
poised to attack the United States in a devastating chemical, biological
or "dirty bomb" attack.
Since the September 11 attacks,
the terror group has become much more dispersed, with less funding, following
the arrests or deaths of key financiers.
But the group has learned to operate
on much smaller sums than the estimated $30 million spent annually prior
to September 11, 2001, the report said.
"Al-Qaida is actively striving to
attack the United States and inflict mass casualties," the report said.
The report noted in particular the group's "ambitious" biological weapons
program and efforts in 1994 to purchase uranium.
"Al-Qaida and other extremist groups
will likely continue to exploit leaks of national security information
in the media, open-source information on techniques such as mixing explosives,
and advances in electronics," it said.
In the preliminary report, the commission
points to a series of attacks on the US or its allies as early as 1992
that US intelligence would determine by the late 1990s were linked to bin
Laden or his terror group.
They included a December 1992 explosion
outside two hotels in Aden, Yemen; the October 1993 killing of 18 US soldiers
in Mogadishu, Somalia; a November 1995 car bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia;
and the June 1996 explosion at the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Dhahran,
Saudi Arabia.
Bin Laden's ties to the 1993 World
Trade Center bombing and a failed plot to blow up commercial aircraft in
1994 in Manila, Philippines, are unclear, but they offered significant
warning signs that Islamic terrorists were intent on demolishing American
symbols and inflicting mass casualties, the panel said.
"What is clear is that these plots
were major benchmarks in the evolving Islamist threat to the United States
and foreshadowed later attacks that were indisputably carried out by al
Qaeda under bin Laden's direction," the report stated.
Scheduled to testify Wednesday were
field agents from the FBI and CIA, as well as Patrick Fitzgerald, a former
attorney in New York who prosecuted alleged terrorists in the 1993 World
Trade Center bombing and the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa.
