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2011年5月14日星期六

Denying Links to Militants, Pakistan’s Spy Chief Denounces U.S. Before Parliament

Rather, the spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, blamed an intelligence failure for the presence of Bin Laden in the city of Abbottabad, where a top military academy is located and where the leader of Al Qaeda was killed in an American raid on May 2.


General Pasha said he had offered his resignation twice to the leader of the army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. As his presence before Parliament made clear, it was not accepted.


The two generals were called before the extraordinary 11-hour session to answer to the failures of the military and the intelligence agency that allowed a team of American commandos to enter and leave Pakistan in a stealth helicopter operation undetected.


Unusually vibrant criticism by some politicians and the Pakistani press after the raid compelled them to try to repair the reputation of the military and the intelligence agency, which the army controls.


But after recognizing the lapse, General Pasha rallied Parliament behind him, several legislators said, with strong criticisms of the United States that elicited thumps of approval from the chamber, including leading members of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the major partner in the coalition that the Obama administration supports.


At the end of the session, the leader of the opposition party, Pakistan Muslim League-N, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, who has been one of the most severe critics of the military since the raid, closed ranks behind the military. The session was organized so that “a positive message should go out to the masses,” Mr. Khan said.


A resolution that was passed at the session said Pakistan would revisit its relationship with the United States “with the view to ensuring Pakistan’s national interests were fully respected.”


In that vein, Pakistan’s chief spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, will not allow the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct operations in Pakistan without the full knowledge of the ISI, General Pasha said.


The spy chief did the talking. General Kayani attended the session, along with the heads of the air force and the navy, but did not speak, apparently to be spared the humiliation. Senior military officials, considered to be above civilian law and a power unto themselves, rarely appear before Parliament, or even its defense committees.


General Pasha told Parliament he had a “shouting match” with the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, over C.I.A. activities in Pakistan when they met recently in Washington, several lawmakers who attended the session said.


Reviewing the history of American relations with Pakistan, General Pasha declared that the United States, which has provided Pakistan with about $20 billion in aid over the last decade, had let Pakistan down at every turn since the 1960s, including imposing sanctions on the country in the 1990s.


“And now they have conducted a sting operation on us,” General Pasha said, according to one lawmaker. The intelligence chief was referring to the fact that the Obama administration had decided not to inform Pakistan in advance of the raid because of fears that the Pakistanis could not be trusted.


Before answering questions from the more than 400 members of Parliament from both chambers, the military gave a PowerPoint presentation that included photographs of Qaeda militants captured or killed by the ISI since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.


General Pasha then explained that Pakistan should be given credit for dismantling Al Qaeda even before the United States killed Bin Laden, according to the accounts from lawmakers after the session.


In a direct assault on statements by American officials that the ISI supports jihadist militant groups, including the Haqqani network in North Waziristan, General Pasha said there was no such policy. “We have nothing to do with the Haqqani network,” he was quoted as saying.


American officials have long maintained suspicion that the Haqqani group, along with the Taliban, has been sheltered and sponsored by Pakistan, which uses them to push Pakistani interests in Afghanistan, where the insurgents attack NATO forces.


Some of the legislators asked for explanations of why the Pakistani Air Force did not detect the American helicopters that ferried the team of Navy Seal commandos into Abbottabad and out again.


The deputy chief of Air Staff Operations, Air Marshal Muhammad Hassan, said the American helicopters were equipped with stealth technology that enabled them to evade radar.


By the time the air force learned about the raid from ground reports at Abbottabad and launched fighter jets, the helicopters had completed their mission and flown out of Pakistan, he said.


But the air marshal, in answer to a question, said that the F-16 jet fighters provided by the United States to Pakistan were capable of shooting down the drones that the C.I.A. flies over the tribal areas to attack militants. The drone campaign has become increasingly unpopular among Pakistan’s politicians even as the Obama administration insists that it has no intention of halting the flights.


For the first time, according to one lawmaker, Air Marshal Hassan acknowledged that Pakistan allowed the United States to fly the drones out of Shamsi Air Base in Baluchistan.


The Pakistani government has always maintained in public that it does not condone the drone campaign, while in private it has given permission for the flights.


Salman Masood contributed reporting.


 

2011年4月9日星期六

Medvedev denounces cyber-attack

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
8 April 2011 Last updated at 06:06 ET Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, 6 Apr 11 President Medvedev has enthusiastically embraced new media Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has condemned as "outrageous and illegal" a cyber-attack on a popular social networking website that hosts his blog.

The LiveJournal site was hit by a denial-of-service attack on Wednesday.

The site crashed after being bombarded with messages from thousands of infected computers, an expert from the Kaspersky Labs computer company said.

Russian media say a similar attack has now hit Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper often critical of official policies.

In his blog, President Medvedev said: "As an active user of LiveJournal I consider these actions outrageous and illegal.

"What has occurred should be examined by LiveJournal's administration and law enforcement agencies."

The internet has become a major forum for free speech in Russia, where many broadcasters and newspapers are influenced by powerful state or corporate interests.

Internet 'parliament'

Novaya Gazeta's website could not be accessed on Friday, following the cyber-attack, which began on Thursday.

Alexander Gostev, of Kaspersky Labs, told Moscow Echo radio the attack was coming from thousands of infected computers from China, the US and Western Europe.

A spokesperson for Novaya Gazeta, quoted by Interfax news agency, linked the attack to the paper's effort to launch an "online parliament".

Nadezhda Prusenkova said: "We would like to create a platform to serve as an alternative to the incumbent authorities, where the problems which the authorities either ignore, or just choose to ignore, could be discussed."

Sup Media, the owner of LiveJournal, said it was "delighted" that Mr Medvedev had "criticised the recent hacker attacks in the strongest terms".

"We will continue to investigate the source of these attacks and work to improve our systems to prevent any recurrence," Sup Media CEO Annelies Van Den Belt said.

Sup Media described Mr Medvedev as "an enthusiastic blogger on LiveJournal for the past two years".


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