Bruce Loudon, Islamabad | September 26, 2008
A FULL-SCALE emergency was sounded at Islamabad's international airport last night as the al-Qa'ida-linked organisation responsible for bombing Pakistan's Marriott hotel vowed to launch even bigger attacks.
In a mobile phone message in English sent to reporters, theal-Qa'ida-linked Fidayeen-al-Islam - "Islamic commandos" - warned that "all those who facilitate Americans and NATO crusaders like (Marriott hotel owner) Sadruddin Hashwani, they will keep on receiving blows."
The group claimed it attacked the Marriott because 250 US marines and NATO troops were staying there - something denied by the US embassy.
Fifty-three people were killed in the attack, the worst terrorist strike in Pakistan.
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari declared his country to be "in a state of war", while intelligence agencies said they had "credible and verifiable" information of an imminent suicide bomb attack.
The US State Department and governments of allied nations have barred their citizens from hotels in Islamabad, saying they fear new terror attacks.
This follows the US accelerating attacks on suspected militants in Pakistan's frontier region, mostly with missiles fired from unmanned drones operating from Afghanistan.
The incursions - especially a ground raid into South Waziristan by US commandos on September 3 - have angered many ordinary Pakistanis as well as the militants.
Owais Ghani, governor of the troubled North West Frontier Province, said the time had come to talk to the militants, including the Taliban leader Mullah Omar.
"The solution, the bottom line, is that political stability will only come to Afghanistan when all political power groups, irrespective of the length of their beard, are given their just due share in the political dispensation in Afghanistan," he reportedly said.
Mr Ghani was reported as saying that "Mullah Omar is a political reality" and adding that Afghans intolerant of foreigners on their soil were staging "a national uprising - to eliminate the Taliban you have to slaughter half the Afghan nation".
Meanwhile, the road to Islamabad airport has been declared "insecure" and susceptible to terrorist attack.
Two weeks ago, would-be assassins near the airport road fired shots at a convoy of prime ministerial cars, apparently in an attempt to kill Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
Speaking to journalists at an Iftar dinner to mark the end of another day of fasting for Ramadan, Mr Gilani said with reference to the US incursions in Pakistan: "I want to declare categorically that we will not tolerate violation of our sovereignty by anyone in the name of combating terrorism.
"We are fighting extremism and terror not for any another country, but our own country. This is our own war."
At almost the same time, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates maintained the US had "the right to act against terrorist targets in Pakistan" but that the new Government in Islamabad had to be "a willing partner".
A FULL-SCALE emergency was sounded at Islamabad's international airport last night as the al-Qa'ida-linked organisation responsible for bombing Pakistan's Marriott hotel vowed to launch even bigger attacks.
In a mobile phone message in English sent to reporters, theal-Qa'ida-linked Fidayeen-al-Islam - "Islamic commandos" - warned that "all those who facilitate Americans and NATO crusaders like (Marriott hotel owner) Sadruddin Hashwani, they will keep on receiving blows."
The group claimed it attacked the Marriott because 250 US marines and NATO troops were staying there - something denied by the US embassy.
Fifty-three people were killed in the attack, the worst terrorist strike in Pakistan.
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari declared his country to be "in a state of war", while intelligence agencies said they had "credible and verifiable" information of an imminent suicide bomb attack.
The US State Department and governments of allied nations have barred their citizens from hotels in Islamabad, saying they fear new terror attacks.
This follows the US accelerating attacks on suspected militants in Pakistan's frontier region, mostly with missiles fired from unmanned drones operating from Afghanistan.
The incursions - especially a ground raid into South Waziristan by US commandos on September 3 - have angered many ordinary Pakistanis as well as the militants.
Owais Ghani, governor of the troubled North West Frontier Province, said the time had come to talk to the militants, including the Taliban leader Mullah Omar.
"The solution, the bottom line, is that political stability will only come to Afghanistan when all political power groups, irrespective of the length of their beard, are given their just due share in the political dispensation in Afghanistan," he reportedly said.
Mr Ghani was reported as saying that "Mullah Omar is a political reality" and adding that Afghans intolerant of foreigners on their soil were staging "a national uprising - to eliminate the Taliban you have to slaughter half the Afghan nation".
Meanwhile, the road to Islamabad airport has been declared "insecure" and susceptible to terrorist attack.
Two weeks ago, would-be assassins near the airport road fired shots at a convoy of prime ministerial cars, apparently in an attempt to kill Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
Speaking to journalists at an Iftar dinner to mark the end of another day of fasting for Ramadan, Mr Gilani said with reference to the US incursions in Pakistan: "I want to declare categorically that we will not tolerate violation of our sovereignty by anyone in the name of combating terrorism.
"We are fighting extremism and terror not for any another country, but our own country. This is our own war."
At almost the same time, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates maintained the US had "the right to act against terrorist targets in Pakistan" but that the new Government in Islamabad had to be "a willing partner".
Source:The Australian
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