Pakistan may be source of anthrax attacks

The Times Of India ^ | November 7th,2001 | CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

[pumacan]

TIMES NEWS NETWORK WASHINGTON: The finger of suspicion for the anthrax attack on America points to terrorists in Pakistan.
US officials disclosed on Tuesday that a letter to the American consulate in Lahore that tested positive for anthrax in preliminary checks was mailed locally in Pakistan. Hitherto, all anthrax-tainted letters have originated in the United States.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher confirmed that the Lahore letter was mailed from within Pakistan. "It came in the local mail. They had an off-site mailroom facility and it was checked, bagged, isolated there and then sent on to us for further testing," he said.

Samples from the tainted letter have since arrived in the United States for further testing by the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Several American consulates and facilities across the world have reported receiving anthrax-tainted letters. But all of them have come via diplomatic pouches from the United States. If further tests on the Lahore letter confirm anthrax contamination, it will be the first piece of such mail not to have originated in the U.S.

That could go a long way in determining whether the anthrax attacks are the work of the domestic disaffected or international terrorist, a question that has been vexing US authorities since the first tainted letters were detected soon after the September 11 carnage.

Officials however cautioned that it was still too early to come to any conclusions. Many preliminary confirmations of anthrax presence have turned out to be negative in later tests. For US authorities to make a linkage between the Lahore letter and the anthrax attack in the US, the strain would have to be identical.

Despite the growing indications that extremist elements in Pakistan may have penetrated facilities handling weapons of mass destruction, administration officials, particularly from the state department, appear sanguine about the security aspects, and have repeatedly certified that General Musharraf has things under control.

[notyourregularhandle]

NEVER FORGET

[constable tom]

Or, is is possible the Musharraf is playing a two faced game, one face to the US and our pathetic Powellian "coalition" that includes the likes of Syria (we even attempted to sign up Cuba!) and yet, his real face to his buddies running the ISI?

Hard to say, as we are both firmly in the position of merely speculating absent any facts. What I tried to suggest was that there could be elements of the Pakistani government which continue to covertly support al Queda and the Taliban (namely, some members of ISI). Whether such covert support, if it exists, happens with the knowledge or permission of Musharraf is further speculation. Who knows?

BTW, it is just as reasonable to suspect our "Powellian" coalition building operates under similar (bifurcated) intentions. However, American thinking (and usually, our policies) tend to be more straight-forward and less duplicitous than Middle Eastern thinking and policies, which I like to think of as being a strength of ours, with certain exceptions made necessary in order to counter adversarial intentions of hostile nations at times.