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Perv admits secret deal on drone strikes
ISLAMABAD: Former president Pervez Musharraf acknowledged his government secretly signed off on US drone strikes, reports the CNN.

It is the first time a top past or present Pakistani official has admitted publicly to such a deal. Pakistani leaders long have openly challenged the drone programme and insisted they had no part in it. Musharraf’s admission, though, suggests he and others did play some role, even if they didn’t oversee the programme or approve every attack.

Ex-president insists govt signed off on strikes ‘only on a few occasions when the target was absolutely isolated and no chance of collateral damage’
In an interview this week in Islamabad, CNN said Musharraf insisted Pakistan’s government signed off on strikes “only on a few occasions, when a target was absolutely isolated and no chance of collateral damage.”

Still, his admission that Pakistani leaders agreed to even a limited number of strikes runs counter to their repeated denunciations of a programme they long claimed the United States was operating without their approval.

The drone strikes – which the nonpartisan public policy group New American Foundation estimates have killed at least 1,990 people in Pakistan, including hundreds of civilians – are unpopular in Pakistan.

“Today, the world superpower is having its own way, without any consent from Pakistan,” former interior minister Rehman Malik had said last month. Despite such pronouncements, there’s been speculation that the story might have been different behind the scenes.

In a cable sent in August 2008 and later posted online by Wikileaks, then-US ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson mentioned a discussion about drones during a meeting that also involved Malik and then-prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.

“Malik suggested we hold off alleged Predator attacks until after the Bajaur operation,” Patterson wrote. “The PM brushed aside Rehman’s remarks and said, ‘I don’t care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We’ll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.’ “

Unmanned U.S. drones began launching attacks in Pakistan in 2004, by which time Musharraf had been president for five years after taking power in a bloodless coup. He said that Pakistani leaders would OK US drone strikes after discussions involving military and intelligence units and only if “there was no time for our own ... military to act.”

This happened “only rarely,” CNN quotes Musharraf as saying. But sometimes, he said, “you couldn’t delay action.” “These ups and downs kept going,” he said. “It was a very fluid situation, a vicious enemy, ... mountains, inaccessible areas.”

Musharraf said that one of those killed by US drones was Nek Muhammed, a tribal leader accused of harbouring al Qaeda militants in Pakistan’s western border region. At the time, in June 2004, Pakistan intelligence sources said Muhammed died after Pakistani forces launched a missile at a house where he was staying.
Posted by: Steve White 2013-04-13
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=366011