“Bush made Osama deal with Musharraf“:
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has struck a deal with the US not to capture Osama Bin Laden, fearing this could lead to unrest in Pakistan, according to a special investigation by The Guardian.
The paper reported Saturday that Bin Laden was being protected by three elaborate security rings manned by tribesmen stretching 192 kms in diameter in northern Pakistan.
The paper’s information is based on comments made by Mansoor Ijaz, an American of Pakistan origin who, the paper said, knows al-Qaeda better than most people and had close contacts in Pakistan’s intelligence agencies.
Ijaz believed an agreement was reached between Musharraf and US authorities shortly after Bin Laden’s flight from his stronghold Tora Bora in Afghanistan in December 2001.
The Pakistanis feared that to capture or kill Bin Laden so soon after a deeply unpopular war in Afghanistan would incite civil unrest in Pakistan and trigger a spate of revenge al-Qaida attacks on Western targets across the world.
“There was a judgment made that it would be more destabilising in the longer term. There would still be the ability to get him at a later date when it was more appropriate”, Ijaz told The Guardian .
The Americans, according to Ijaz, accepted the argument, not least because of the shift in focus to the impending war in Iraq.