Unclassified Hillary Clinton emails

WASHINGTON: The United States accused Pakistan of illegally modifying American-made missiles to expand its capability to strike land targets, a potential threat to India, according to senior administration and Congressional officials, the New York Times reported in August 2009.

The charge, which set off a new outbreak of tensions between the United States and Pakistan, was made in an unpublicised diplomatic protest to the then Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and other top Pakistani officials.

At issue is the detection by American intelligence agencies of a suspicious missile test on April 23 — a test never announced by the Pakistanis — that appeared to give the country a new offensive weapon.

American military and intelligence officials say they suspect that Pakistan has modified the Harpoon antiship missiles that the United States sold the country in the 1980s, a move that would be a violation of the Arms Control Export Act.

Pakistan has denied the charge, saying it developed the missile itself. The United States has also accused Pakistan of modifying American-made P-3C aircraft for land-attack missions, another violation of United States law that the Obama administration has protested.

Whatever their origin, the missiles would be a significant new entry into Pakistan’s arsenal against India. They would enable Pakistan’s small navy to strike targets on land, complementing the sizable land-based missile arsenal that Pakistan has developed.

That, in turn, would be likely to spur another round of an arms race with India that the United States has been trying, unsuccessfully, to halt.

“The focus of our concern is that this is a potential unauthorised modification of a maritime antiship defensive capability to an offensive land-attack missile,” said another senior administration official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter involves classified information.

A senior Pakistani official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity because the interchanges with Washington have been both delicate and highly classified, said the American accusation was “incorrect.” The official said that the missile tested was developed by Pakistan, just as it had modified North Korean designs to build a range of land-based missiles that could strike India. He said that Pakistan had taken the unusual step of agreeing to allow American officials to inspect the country’s Harpoon inventory to prove that it had not violated the law, a step that administration officials praised.

Some experts are also sceptical of the American claims. Robert Hewson, editor of Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, a yearbook and Web-based data service, said the Harpoon missile did not have the necessary range for a land-attack missile, which would lend credibility to Pakistani claims that they are developing their own new missile. Moreover, he said, Pakistan already has more modern land-attack missiles that it developed itself or acquired from China.

“They’re beyond the need to reverse-engineer old US kit,” Hewson said in a telephone interview. “They’re more sophisticated than that.”

He said the ship-to-shore missile that Pakistan was testing was part of a concerted effort to develop an array of conventional missiles that could be fired from the air, land or sea to address India’s much more formidable conventional missile arsenal.

Before lawmakers departed for their summer recess, administration officials briefed Congress on the protest to Pakistan.

The dispute has the potential to delay or possibly even derail the Kerry-Lugar-Berman legislation to provide Pakistan with $7.5 billion in civilian aid over five years; lawmakers are expected to vote on the aid package when they return from their recess next month.





Clinton well briefed on Pak media before visit in 2009

News Desk

ISLAMABAD: An unclassified US Department of State record has been leaked according to which a Memorandum for the Secretary was signed on Monday, October 26, 2009 at the Ben Franklin Room and Monroe Room.

The document reads Re: Pre-trip Media: 2 Taped TV interviews with Dawn TV and Geo TV.

Hillary Clinton was told: You will tape two 7-10 minute TV interviews in advance of your trip to Pakistan. Both interviews are embargoed until you are wheels down on Wednesday, October 28, so there is no need to conceal the trip.

The primary purpose of your interviews is to reach the people of Pakistan immediately upon arrival in Islamabad, and to set the tone for the trip. The following is the scenario for the 2 interviews: 1. After recording videos in the Ben Franklin Room, you will tape a 7-10 minute interview with Mr. Anwar Iqbal, Senior Correspondent for Pakistan’s English language commercial broadcaster, Dawn TV (You also conducted an interview with Mr Anwar Iqbal on July 17, 2009, prior to your trip to India — transcript attached); 2. Following the interview with Dawn TV in the Ben Franklin Room, you will proceed to the Monroe Room to tape the second interview with Mr. Sami Abraham of Geo TV.

She was also given profiles of the TV channels and biographies of interviewers.





ISI sheltered Mulla Omar, Hillary believed

News Desk

ISLAMABAD: “Top Taliban leader Mulla Omar was sheltered by the ISI after the outfit’s leadership fled from Afghanistan in 2001,” according to an email received by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton during her tenure.

One Sid wrote to Ms Clinton in an email on August 25, 2010: “I’m sure you know the facts in this well-informed piece, how Mullah Omar was saved by the ISI, for example, but the idea of Afghanistan as an aspect of lndo-Pak war is the best and overarching strategic concept.” The full name and email of the author has been redacted.

The mail is among the tranche of emails from Clinton’s private server which were released by the State Department.

The comment in the email is on top of an article ‘The military and the mullah’ written by William Dalrymple in New Statesman, which said that the Pakistani state has a long history of nurturing jihadis as a means of dominating Afghanistan and undermining India. “It is proving a fatal alliance,” the article said. According to the article, the ISI gave refuge to the leadership of the Taliban after it fled from Afghanistan in 2001.

“Mullah Mohammed Omar was kept in an ISI safehouse in Quetta; his militia was lodged in the sprawling suburb of Pashtunabad,” it said.

“There, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar presided over the Taliban military committee and war chest. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of Hizb-e lslami, was lured back from exile in Iran and allowed to operate freely outside Peshawar, while Jalaluddin Haqqani, one of the most violent Taliban commanders, was given sanctuary in North Waziristan.

“Other groups were dispatched to safehouses in Balochistan,” the article said.