Posted on 05/31/2008 7:05:56 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, on a state visit to North Korea in 1993, smuggled in critical data on uranium enrichment -- a route to making a nuclear weapon -- to help facilitate a missile deal with Pyongyang, according to a new book by a journalist who knew the slain politician well.
The assertion is based on conversations that the author, Shyam Bhatia, had with Bhutto in 2003, in which she said she would tell him a secret "so significant that I had to promise never to reveal it, at least not during her lifetime," Bhatia writes in "Goodbye, Shahzadi," which was published in India last month.
Bhutto was slain in December while campaigning to win back the prime minister's post.
The account, if verified, could advance the timeline for North Korea's interest in uranium enrichment. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a research organization on nuclear weapons programs, said the assertion "makes sense," because there were signs of "funny procurements" in the late 1980s by North Korea that suggested a nascent effort to assemble an uranium enrichment project.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
ping.
Any thoughts?
Pakistan’s ballistic missiles are all painted variations of Korean missiles.
Go figure.
Bennie went to Harvard.
That’s all I know.
Not surprised...she was the U.S. State Department’s last, greatest hope for unseating both Musharif and the Islamo-crazies before she stupidly got herself killed.
So is it a good thing or a bad thing that she’s dead?
Good question.
There was no way she was going to survive that election.
A million enemies from so many directions.
NEWSWEEK: The Taliban came to power in Afghanistan while you were prime minister of Pakistan. Why did you support the Taliban?
Benazir Bhutto: The Taliban were actually students in university who decided to go back to Afghanistan after the Russians left. My reports were that the Taliban were being welcomed by the people and that they were building peace. Initially we thought the Taliban was a stabilizing force. My government was keen to establish ties with Central Asia, so we were quite pleased and we encouraged them initially.... We wanted to import wheat and export cotton to Central Asia and wanted a route that would give us access to Central Asia through Kandahar [where the Taliban is headquartered]. We were trying to bypass Kabul and establish an enclave in the south. The Taliban were supposed to give us safe passage.
Q: What did the Taliban stand to gain?
A: Initially we gave them political and diplomatic support. We also gave them fuel, food, communications, transportation. The Taliban rose up and were embraced by us because we saw them as the ticket to our own economic interests regarding Central Asia.
Impossible. She is a saint and a martyr and would never have done anything wrong. All those stories of fraud surrounding her and her family were just disinformation.
Isn’t that what we were told?
It is a good thing. She was a female jihadist. Her inflamatory speeches to Moslems can be viewed on youtube.
Nothing directly, other than an exchange for rendered services. Helping the Taliban was Pakistan's way of paying for jehadi schoolteachers and cannon-fodder who were sent to Kashmir, India.
Agreed. And a corrupt one at that.
Anything’s possible I guess, but for some reason, this doesn’t pass my personal smell test. But hey, what the hell do I know. Lol.
Weird how all these media darlings are so unworthy of the praise heaped on them. I remember the comparisons to JFK and the near tears. Everyone knew she’d funded al-Quada in neighboring Afghanistan in her second term as PM. Granted, she wasn’t a supporter, just an opportunist. But isn’t that bad enough? In fact, isn’t that quite bad?
the u.s. thought it needed a regime change,
and she was our next p.m.
Mussolini's assassination precluded his being freed again.
The Ceausescus come to mind as an extremely positive assassination. Keeping them alive would give hope their followers.
Marat was a Guevara-like psychopathic killer whose elimination probably saved countless lives.
Speaking of Guevara-like, Che's death could be counted as an assassination, since he apparently surrendered and boasted that he was worth more alive than dead. If he were correct, than his assassination was positive.
If Hitler had gone down on July 20, 1944 it would have saved a lot of lives.
Trotsky's assassination probably worked out well for Stalin. There was a price to be paid for the deed, but Trotsky was a thorn in his side.
The Medicis seemed to have made effective use of assassination as a means of silencing enemies and instilling fear in potential enemies. They more or less got credit for institutionalizing it.
Metacomet (King Phillip) is alleged to have poisoned his accomodationalist older brother and father, Massasoit, triggering King Phillip's War. The putative assassination was successful in that Metacomet got what he wanted, a confrontation with the colonist, but a disaster in that he died in the war and the Algonquins were vanquished so decisively that they never again challenged European supremacy in New England.
Caesar's assassination lead to civil war and the death of the Republic, but was the fall out any worse than the consequences of an unchallenged Caesarean dictatorship?
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