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Karachi, 27 Dec. (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the death on Thursday of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. “We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan. It is believed that the decision to kill Bhutto, who is the leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was made by...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al Qaeda has regrouped in Pakistan's remote Afghan border area and begun to focus attacks on the Pakistani government and military, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday. But the Pentagon chief said al Qaeda's activities in Pakistan have not yet affected Afghanistan, where U.S. and coalition forces have faced increased Taliban violence in the past two years. "There is no question that some of the areas in the frontier area have become areas where Al Qaeda has re-established itself," Gates said. "But so far, we haven't seen any significant consequence of that in Afghanistan itself....

SWAT, Pakistan - Muslim extremists are expanding their control of northern Pakistan, challenging the U.S.-backed government of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and adding to the lands where terrorists allied with Osama bin Laden find refuge. Once restricted to pockets in the mountains along the Afghanistan border, radical mullahs and their followers now wield power in vast areas of northwest Pakistan. They have moved in the past few months beyond the tribal regions and into northern Pakistan cities and the Swat Valley. The increased influence of the Islamic radicals was highlighted this week by intense fighting between local gunmen and government...

LAHORE: An increasing number of militants from Europe are travelling to Pakistan to train and plot attacks on the West, European and US anti-terrorism officials say, according to a report in the LA Times. “There have always been people going to Pakistan, but it is more frequent now,” said a senior French intelligence official who, like others interviewed for the report, spoke on condition of anonymity. “There is a return. It is a cycle ... And you have the attractive phenomenon that all the big chiefs of Al Qaeda are there.” “The emerging route, illuminated by alleged bomb plots dismantled...

An all-out battle for control of Pakistan's restive North and South Waziristan is about to commence between the Pakistani military and the Taliban and al-Qaeda adherents who have made these tribal areas their own. According to a top Pakistani security official who spoke to Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity, the goal this time is to pacify the Waziristans once and for all. All previous military operations - usually spurred by intelligence provided by the Western coalition - have had limited objectives, aimed at specific bases or sanctuaries or blocking the cross-border movement of guerrillas. Now the military is...

US terms Pakistan Al Qaeda ‘safe haven’ By Anwar Iqbal WASHINGTON, Oct 9: The White House on Tuesday released a national strategy for combating terrorism, singling out Pakistan as an Al Qaeda ‘safe haven’, which can be used for launching another 9/11 like attack inside the United States. This is the first time that the country has been named as an Al Qaeda ‘safe haven’ in a White House policy document. Al Qaeda has “protected its top leadership, replenished operational lieutenants, and regenerated a safe haven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas — core capabilities that would help facilitate another...

Pakistan: Concern over nukes as al Qaeda camps empty US intelligence investigates Pakistan's nuclear security and the military’s loyalty to Musharraf as the Northwest Frontier Province spins further out of control As the security situation in the Northwest Frontier Province continues to deteriorate and President Pervez Musharraf's political stock continues to drop, the US military intelligence community is "urgently assessing how secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons would be in the event President Gen. Pervez Musharraf were replaced." Meanwhile, the Taliban and al Qaeda have dispersed operatives from the training camps in the Northwest Frontier Province and are preparing to fight on...

ISLAMABAD — Pakistani helicopter gunships launched new assaults Saturday on al-Qaida and Taliban hideouts in the mountainous northwest as President Pervez Musharraf prepared to address a peace summit in Kabul. Cobra helicopters killed three suspected militants, pounding what was believed to be their base after a firefight Saturday in Mir Ali town in North Waziristan tribal district, the military said. "A security convoy was passing when an improvised explosive device planted by militants exploded, causing no harm to the security personnel," chief military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said. "Armed miscreants then attacked security men with automatic weapons that injured...

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) - Helicopter gunships pounded suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda hideouts in northern Pakistan, as the United States called for even greater efforts in the battle against the militants. The military said at least 10 militants were killed in the attack, which also involved ground forces, on a pro-Taliban district in the restive North Waziristan region near the Afghan border on Thursday. Military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad told AFP the strike was launched after several roadside bomb attacks earlier in the day in the same region wounded four soldiers. In a separate incident in South Waziristan 16 soldiers...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Tuesday that talk of U.S. military strikes against al-Qaida in Pakistan only hurts the fight against terrorism, and his troops bombarded militant hideouts in their strongest response yet to a month of anti-government attacks. Ten suspected militants were killed. The assault by artillery and helicopter gunships "knocked out" two compounds in Daygan village in the tribal belt near the border with Afghanistan that were being used as staging posts for attacks on security forces, said Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, the army's top spokesman. Ten militants were killed and at least seven were...

MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan - Government forces attacked two militant bases with helicopter gunships and artillery Tuesday in some of the army's toughest action in the lawless Afghan border region since militant attacks began surging last month. Spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad said troops targeted a pair of compounds in Daygan, a village 10 miles west of North Waziristan's main town of Miran Shah, after they received credible intelligence that militants were there. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key ally of the United States in its war on terror, is under rising pressure from Washington to crack down on militants in...

Artillery, helicopters assault two camps near the Afghan border As the security situation in North Waziristan and the greater Northwest Frontier Province, the Pakistani military launched an assault on two "militant" bases near the Afghan border. The military struck two Taliban and al Qaeda bases in the village of Daygan with artillery and Cobra gunship helicopters. "No ground forces were used in the assault," the Associated Press reported. The attack, which occurred 10 miles west of Miramshah, lasted four hours. Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, the chief spokesman for the Pakistani military, has said the attacks in North Waziristan are not...

Pakistan accused Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama of "sheer ignorance" for threatening to launch US military strikes against Al-Qaeda on Pakistani soil. ADVERTISEMENT Obama warned Wednesday that if he is elected president, he would order US forces to hit extremist targets on Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan if embattled military ruler President Pervez Musharraf failed to act. "Such statements are being made out of sheer ignorance," Pakistan's Minister of State for Information, Tariq Azeem, told AFP. "They are not fully apprised about the ground realities and not aware of the efforts by Pakistan." Islamabad has bristled against a string of similar...

Obama targets al Qaeda in Pakistan for possible military strike Democratic US presidential candidate, Barack Obama has upped the ante in his campaign by toughening his stance on foreign policy. Against the background of debate in Washington over what to do about a resurgent al Qaeda and Taliban in areas of northwest Pakistan, Obama said he would order military action without the consent of Pakistan's...

CAIRO, Egypt: An al-Qaida commander who escaped from a U.S. prison called on Pakistanis in a new Web video to overthrow President Gen. Pervez Musharraf as revenge for the killing of a pro-Taliban cleric in the Red Mosque showdown. The video was issued by Abu Yahia al-Libi, who broke out of the Bagram Air Base prison north of Kabul in 2005 and who Western and Afghan intelligence officials believe has since worked training suicide bombers in a camp in eastern Afghanistan. "O people of jihad (Holy War) in Pakistan ... hurry up and get rid of this corrupt and tyrannical...

Statement by Abu Yahya al Libi contradicts Newsweek report on divisions in al Qaeda over Pakistan policy Al Qaeda has weighed in on the Pakistani government's military assault on the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, in Islamabad last month. As Sahab productions, the media outlet for al Qaeda's central leadership, released a 21 minute tape by Abu Yahya al Libi, a senior al Qaeda leader who has served as a spokesman and released numerous propaganda videos. In the video, titled “Of the Masters of Martyrs,” al Libi praised the followers of the Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa as "martyrs." He...

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive. The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid. "Let me make this clear," Obama said in a speech prepared for delivery...

The National Intelligence Estimate released July 17 put the problem plainly enough: Al-Qaeda has "regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability" using a new haven in the lawless frontier area of northwest Pakistan known as Waziristan. The question is: What is the United States going to do about it? For those who might have forgotten in the six years since Sept. 11, 2001, what a reconstituted al-Qaeda could do, the intelligence analysts explained that the terrorist group has "the goal of producing mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, significant economic aftershocks and/or fear among the U.S. population." The analysts noted...

Al-Qa'eda divided over drive to oust Musharraf By Philip Sherwell and Massoud Ansari, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:43am BST 29/07/2007 A deep split has emerged within al-Qa'eda over the wisdom of the terror network's drive to overthrow and kill Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf, according to radical Pakistani Islamists allied to the terror network. 13 people were killed and 50 injured in a suicide attack near the Red Mosque on Friday Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has ordered the series of retaliatory attacks on Pakistani targets that have followed the storming of the Red Mosque, an extremist stronghold in Islamabad,...

WASHINGTON: Independent security experts in Washington are not convinced by the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that accuses Pakistan of facilitating the relocation of Al Qaeda in its tribal areas. They say that the people on the job at the CIA are “incompetent” and not sufficiently experienced to give such sweeping “findings”. “Approximately half of the analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have less than five years on the job,” said Larry Johnson, a former employee of the CIA and the US State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. “Most of the new hires came on board after 9/11, were new...

Al Qaeda's safe haven in northwestern Pakistan is largely inaccessible to outside forces and unlikely to be eliminated soon by the U.S. or Pakistani military, top intelligence officials said on Wednesday. At a hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives, Pentagon intelligence chief James Clapper said the United States was not content to sit still while the militant network blamed for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington regenerated its strength in North Waziristan.

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - Several thousand villagers fled a Pakistani tribal region on Wednesday, where an army offensive was expected any day following pressure on Pakistan from the United States to act against al Qaeda cells. Since President George W. Bush spoke on Saturday of being "troubled" by al Qaeda regathering its strength in Pakistan's tribal lands, some kind of counter-terrorism operation has appeared highly probable in North Waziristan. "We have no choice but to pray to Allah for the safety of our lives," said Akbar Khan, a laborer in the main town of Miranshah, worrying that his family risked...

A former Guantanamo Bay prisoner wanted for the 2004 kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan blew himself up with a grenade during a clash with security forces on Tuesday, officials said. One-legged Taliban militant Abdullah Mehsud killed himself to avoid capture after troops raided his hideout, interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema told AFP. The Islamic rebel's death comes amid intensifying US pressure on President Pervez Musharraf to take military action against Al-Qaeda and Taliban safe havens in tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. "Abdullah Mehsud blew himself up with a grenade and died when security forces raided...

AL-QAEDA’S leadership secretly directed the Islamic militants whose armed revolt at the Red Mosque in Islamabad ended last week with more than 100 deaths after it was stormed by the Pakistan army. According to senior intelligence officials, the troops who finally took control discovered letters from Osama Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. They were written to Abdul Rashid Ghazi and Abdul Aziz, the brothers who ran the mosque and adjacent madrasah. Government sources said up to 18 foreign fighters � including Uzbeks, Egyptians and several Afghans � had arrived weeks before the final shootout and set up firing ranges to...

Text of report by Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency Peshawar, 14 July: A suicide attack has killed at least eight Pakistani soldiers. According to reports, a suicide attack was carried out on a military convoy heading for the Miranshah area from Razmak of North Waziristan at 1120 hours [local time] at midday today, causing serious casualties. Confirming the incident to journalists, the spokesman for Pakistani army, Maj Wahid Arshad, said: A suicide bomber struck his vehicle against a military convoy, killing eight soldiers and wounding 20 others. He added that two military vehicles were destroyed in the suicide attack....

A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials. The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations. But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the...

President Pervez Musharraf says he is determined that extremism and terrorism will be eradicated in Pakistan. He was speaking in a televised address to the nation after officials said 75 bodies had been found at the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad. Troops launched a 36 hour attack on the mosque early on Tuesday to flush extremists out of the mosque complex. For months clerics and students had been defying the authorities in their campaign for Sharia law in the capital. Students had kidnapped police as well as Islamabad residents they considered to be engaged in un-Islamic activity.

War On Terror: Two years ago, U.S. forces reportedly knew where al-Qaida's leaders were meeting in Pakistan and were ready to snatch them. The mission was aborted out of respect for Pakistan. The news, first reported by the New York Times, only confirms our long-held suspicion that Islamabad, not Washington, is running by default our war against al-Qaida Central. Two years ago, if the classified reporting is accurate, Osama bin Laden's deputy should have been in leg irons at Gitmo. Instead, Ayman al-Zawahri is directing al-Qaida's foot soldiers around the world. Last week, he delivered Jihad Inc.'s latest quarterly report...

War On Terror: The Talibanization of tribal Pakistan demands a military solution. Not from Islamabad, but Washington. Not via coalition-building, but unilaterally. Not later, now — before it's too late. Last September, on the orders of Pakistan's president, Pakistani forces withdrew from the tribal area in North Waziristan in an ill-advised amnesty deal with local militants. Since then, both North and South Waziristan have come under Taliban control, creating a dangerous new sanctuary for al-Qaida.

“U.S. Aborted Raid on Qaeda Chiefs in Pakistan in ‘05.” So blared the top headline of Sunday’s New York Times. Breathlessly, correspondent Mark Mazzetti reported that reliable intelligence had Ayman al-Zawahiri coming to a meeting in Pakistan’s tribal region. Special-ops forces got all geared up to take him out. Everything was in place to do just that. Then, at the eleventh hour, Donald Rumsfeld got cold feet. Too risky, the Defense secretary is said to have decided. Too much potential for collateral damage, U.S. casualties, and a jolt to America’s complex relationship with the shaky Musharaff government. So, the Times...

U.S. Aborted Raid on Qaeda Chiefs in Pakistan in ’05 By MARK MAZZETTI WASHINGTON, July 7 — A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials. The target was a meeting of Al Qaeda’s leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations. But the mission was called off...

PESHAWAR: Pakistani intelligence agencies arrested six Al Qaeda suspects, including two foreigners, on Tuesday night from the Hayatabad locality, sources said. Intelligence agencies, including the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), police and Inter-Service Intelligence, arrested the six Qaeda suspects when they were travelling in a passenger van. A CID official, on condition of anonymity, told Daily Times that on a tip-off CID and ISI officials arrested the suspects from the van. A senior CID official, however, confirmed the arrest of one Al Qaeda suspect from Mira Kachuri. Intelligence agencies have arrested a number of Al Qaeda suspects time to time and...

An al-Qaeda member wanted by the US has allegedly been shot dead by Pakistani security forces. He was previously thought to have been killed in a US air strike in January, along with other al-Qaeda operatives. Officials, who requested to remain anonymous, named the militant as Abu Marwan al-Suri, the head of al-Qaeda's operations in Pakistan's Waziristan tribal region. The man was killed in Khar, the main town in the Bajaur tribal region. The Pakistani army has been deployed there to help an offensive by US and Afghan troops against militants on the other side of the border. Military spokesman...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - Pakistani security forces arrested four foreign suspected Al-Qaeda militants, two of them disguised in burqas, after a gunfight near the Afghan border, officials said. Commandos shot out the tyres of the men's car outside the northwestern city of Peshawar in a coordinated swoop, the security officials told AFP on condition of anonymity. One other suspect escaped. Agents then raided a hideout where they found assault rifles, grenades and ammunition, plus a laptop and documents identifying possible targets for attacks in Pakistan, the officials said. The men's nationalities had not been confirmed, although some were believed to...

A top Al-Qaeda operative indicted for the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa was the target of a Pakistani military strike and is believed to have been killed, a security official said. The raid which destroyed two houses Wednesday night is believed to have killed Egyptian-born explosives expert Abdul Rahman Al-Muhajir and seven other militants, the senior official told AFP on Thursday. Al-Muhajir is one of many aliases of Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah, who carries a five million dollar bounty on his head and was indicted for the attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed more than...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf said on Saturday he was almost certain a U.S. airstrike which killed 18 Pakistani villagers near the Afghan border last month also killed five al-Qaida militants. “Investigations have proved that five foreign terrorists, some of whom were very important, were also killed in that strike,” Musharraf said.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistani intelligence agents hunted Wednesday for the graves of four Al Qaeda militants believed killed in an airstrike near the Afghan border — bodies that reportedly were whisked away by surviving comrades.

Senators defended on Sunday a purported CIA airstrike that Pakistani officials said killed at least 17 people in a village near the border with Afghanistan but not the intended target, al-Qaida's No. 2 leader. ''We apologize, but I can't tell you that we wouldn't do the same thing again'' in going after Ayman al-Zawahri, said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

WASHINGTON: The Washington Post has quoted a source as saying that Pakistan was “heavily involved” in the air strikes in Bajaur Agency on Friday. “This would not have happened without Pakistani involvement,” the Washington Post quoted an unnamed source as saying about the missile attack on the Pak-Afghan border that killed 18 civilians, including women and children. Earlier reports that Al Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri was among those killed, have been discredited by now. The same source said that the attack was planned and executed by a combination of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers in Pakistan and Pakistani officials. “This...

In the hunt for al-Qaeda, a missile attack on a mountain village killed women and children. The attack was precise, the intelligence was flawed, and the strained relation between Pakistan and the US has been pushed to breaking point Jason Burke and Imtiaz Gul in Islamabad Sunday January 15, 2006 The Observer The missiles were deadly accurate. In the pitch dark of a night in Pakistan's sparsely populated North West Frontier Province, they not only located the three targeted houses on the outskirts of the village of Damadola Burkanday but squarely struck their hujra, the large rooms traditionally used by...

Al-Qaida's second-in-command was not at the site of a U.S. airstrike on a Pakistan village near the Afghan border that killed at least 17 people, two senior Pakistani officials said Saturday. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said that Pakistan's own investigation concluded that Ayman al-Zawahri was not in the village of Damadola. "Their information was wrong, and our investigations conclude that they acted on a false information," said a senior intelligence official who has direct knowledge of the investigations launched by Pakistan to look into the attacks. Separately, a senior government...

U.S. officials told NBC News on Friday that American airstrikes in Pakistan overnight Thursday were aimed at the No. 2 man in the al-Qaida terror organization — Ayman al-Zawahri. One official said intelligence indicated a strong possibility that Zawahri was in the Pakistani village at the time of the airstrike, but there is no confirmation that he was killed. Reports indicate as many as 30 villagers, including some women and children, were killed. The attack came in the Bajur region of Northwest Pakistan, along the Afghanistan border. The CIA Predators carry as many as four Hellfire missiles. Only last month,...

The report is saying he was hit, or at least targetted, in an air strike. Has anyone heard anything else about this? The reporter said this is coming out of the CIA. If I'm wrong, I apologize. I'm just reporting what I'm hearing on the news on KFI. I know we've been down this road before and been disappointed, but the talk show hosts John and Ken whose show this news report this was during kind of disputed her as the news ended and she stood her ground saying it was coming out of the CIA. I guess I'll wait...

Jan. 13, 2006 — Today, according to Pakistani military sources, U.S. aircraft attacked a compound known to be frequented by high level al Qaeda operatives. Pakistani officials tell ABC News that al Qaeda leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, may have been among them. U.S. intelligence for the last few days indicated that Zawahiri might be in the location or about to arrive, although there is still no confirmation from U.S. officials that he was among the victims.

KARACHI - He was once close to Osama bin Laden, has intimate knowledge of al-Qaeda's logistics and financing and its nexus with the military in Pakistan, yet US intelligence has not been able to get its hands on him. Ghulam Mustafa, 38, was picked up about 10 days ago in Lahore, and no charges have been brought against him: he is expected to disappear into a "black hole" and quietly be forgotten. This is because Mustafa, erstwhile head of al-Qaeda's Pakistani operations, has some tales to tell, but the authorities in Pakistan would rather they were not heard, especially by...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistani security agencies have arrested two al-Qaida suspects and are investigating whether one is a Syrian believed to be a key figure in Osama bin Laden's terror network in Europe, two intelligence officials and a senior government official said Thursday. The two suspects were captured this week during a raid on a house in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, said one of the intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to address the media. A senior government official confirmed the arrests and said authorities were investigating whether...

ISLAMABAD (CNN) -- A tribal leader accused of harboring Al Qaeda militants in Pakistan's western border region was killed Thursday night in a targeted missile strike, according to Pakistan intelligence sources. The Associated Press quoted an army spokesman Friday as identifying the tribal leader as Nek Mohammed, a former Taliban fighter. He was killed late Thursday at the home of another tribal chief, the spokesman said. "We were tracking him down and he was killed last night by our hand," Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told The Associated Press.

Lahore, 25 July (AKI) - Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf has said that "al-Qaeda no longer exists" in Pakistan and the few extremists still hiding in the country cannot communicate with the outside world, let along organise an attack on a vast scale like those in London and Sharm el-Sheikh. Quoted by the Jang news agency, Musharraf recalled that the Pakistani secret services had struck heavy blows against the organisation of Osama bin Laden. Islamabad has been in the terror spotlight after the revelations that some of the London bombers had attended Islamic schools there. Six Pakistanis are sought in connection...

Pakistan President Pervez Musharrf today said al-Qaeda's command and communication system has been eliminated, and that the network could not have orchestrated terrorist attacks in London, Egypt or elsewhere from Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf's remarks followed reports that Egyptian police are looking for six Pakistanis as the probe widens into the deadly weekend bombings in Egypt's resort town of Sharm el-Sheik. Musharraf told journalists in the eastern city of Lahore that al-Qaeda "sanctuaries" in Pakistan's rugged tribal regions have been overrun, and that security forces have captured 700 of its fighters. However, Musharraf said small groups of al-Qaida militants might...

Deep inside an anonymous office building at the heart of the Pakistani Army's sprawling Rawalpindi headquarters last week, a metal door swung open and two smartly dressed British officials stepped into a spartan, windowless room. Sitting before them at a bare table, clad in traditional attire of shalwar kamis, loose trousers and shirt, was a slight, bearded figure who was handcuffed and flanked by stern-faced armed guards. The visitors were members of MI5, Britain's security service. Officers of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) assumed that their business suits, worn despite the sweltering heat, concealed pistols and recording devices. One spoke fluent...