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Pakistani
Plan To Assassinate Bin Laden To Stop Inevitable War
By Rashid Omar
ISLAMABAD, Sept 18 (IslamOnline) - Afghani political sources in Islamabad accused
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of putting together a plan to assassinate Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden, whom the United States has stated it wants "dead or alive."
The ISI has put in place a detailed plan for bin Laden's assassination that is dependent on specific members from inside the Taliban movement, one of the sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told IslamOnline in an exclusive interview.
The plan will be similar to the one designed for the Afghani leader Ahmad Shah Masood who was assassinated last week, the source went on to say.
The ISI has extensive experience in the region, said the source, adding that the head of the ISI, owing to his position, handles the portfolio of the Afghani crisis and has been the man directing the course of the Afghani military movement since the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Pakistan controls developments of events in Afghanistan, the source said, making sure that its national interests and sovereignty are protected, especially within borders inhabited by the Pashtun - who share the same ethnic background as the Taliban.
The option of assassinating bin Laden will be finalized after the return of the Pakistani delegation currently visiting Afghanistan. The meetings with the Taliban are geared toward trying to convince senior senior Taliban officials to turn in bin Laden and halt an upcoming U.S. war on Afghanistan and possibly other Islamic countries, the source added.
The source added that any potential war in the region would destabilize Pakistan, where certain forces refuse to give assistance to the United States for religious reasons, even as the Pakistani president pledged military assistance.
The source said that members of the Taliban leadership have cooperated in the past with the ISI; including the Taliban's vice president, Mullah Mohammed Rabbani, who died last year.
Rabbani's followers form a team that still co-operates with the ISI and have played an important role in convincing the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, to go back on intentions to declare war on the United States, the source said.
This team might personally handle the assassination of bin Laden if Taliban Muslim scholars insist on not turning him in, the source added.
A bin Laden assassination would be a blow to U.S. plans of igniting a long-term war in middle Asia, but would probably not put a complete stop to the U.S.'s attack on Afghanistan, he said.
The attack, he added, is necessary to avoid embarrassment for U.S. President George W. Bush in front of an American population demanding revenge from those behind last Tuesday's deadly attacks in New York and Washington.
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