Posted on 06/23/2002 4:16:50 PM PDT by knighthawk
LONDON: British Muslims are the main bankrolling force behind an opportunistic anti-Western alliance between al-Qaeda commanders and Pakistani militants, according to Pakistani intelligence sources quoted by a British newspaper.
The alleged alliance is planning to topple General Musharraf's administration, the paper said.
The Sunday Times report, datelined Islamabad, coincides with a televised message purporting to come from al-Qaeda second-rung leader Sulaiman Abu Ghaith and FBI warnings of further attacks on Western targets.
The report, which is filed by the paper's award-winning war correspondent Marie Colvin, said that the exact sums despatched from the UK were unclear but that "Pakistani militants and Indian intelligence alike estimate British donations to groups fighting the Indian Army's presence in Kashmir at more than two million pounds a year".
Commentators said that the apparent connection between those funding al-Qaeda and radical Islamists anger and those financing Kashmiri militancy could help India's attempts to exert further pressure on Pakistan to cease support for cross-border terrorism.
Sunday's report quoted an unnamed senior Pakistani intelligence official as saying that cash arriving from Britain for militant groups was "one of our big concerns".
The report said that the militants wanted to "hit the Pakistani government as hard as possible" and the ultimate dream was control of the Pakistani Army "an organised 600,000 soldiers and nuclear weapons".
It added that control of the Pakistani Army would allow the radicals to "implement Islam without compromise".
The report said that last week, a British Muslim in Pakistan claimed to have smuggled tens of thousands of pounds into Pakistan to fund, "the emerging alliance of local radicals and remnants of al-Qaeda".
The British Muslim is described as bearded, in his thirties, with a northern English accent and clad in the Pakistani national dress of shalwar.
The paper said that he refused to reveal his identity. It added that the man claimed to have delivered cash, converted into dollars, to a remote Pakistani border camp two weeks ago.
The cash was to be used to fund weapons training for scores of Muslims recruited to al-Qaeda's cause in Britain, Germany, America and Bangladesh, the paper said.
Colvin's report is supplemented by chilling news that British Muslims now account for the single largest group of Western foreign nationals incarcerated as al-Qaeda allies at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
This is seen as evidence that the UK was important recruiting ground for al-Qaeda and that "the network may still be in place"
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