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| Bhutto murdered by Qaeda: CIA |
| Al-Qaeda and allies of Pakistani tribal leader Baitullah Mehsud were behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto
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| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
, 18-January-2008
9:19:6 AM |
| Al-Qaeda and allies of Pakistani tribal leader Baitullah Mehsud were behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the US intelligence chief was quoted as saying on Friday.
A newly active alliance between local and international terrorists poses a grave risk to Pakistan's government, CIA Director Michael Hayden told The Washington Post in an interview.
''What you see is, I think, a change in the character of what's going on there,'' Hayden said.
''You've got this nexus now that probably was always there in latency but is now active: a nexus between al-Qaeda and various extremist and separatist groups,'' he was quoted as saying.
''It is clear that their intention is to continue to try to do harm to the Pakistani state as it currently exists.''
Hayden's comments provide ''the most definitive public assessment by a US intelligence official'' of Bhutto's assassination to date, according to the Post.
''This was done by that network around Baitullah Mehsud. We have no reason to question that,'' Hayden said, echoing assertions by President Pervez Musharraf's government about Bhutto's death.
The CIA chief called the killing ''part of an organized campaign'' of attacks on Pakistani leaders, but spoke prior to this week's attacks on political figures, the Post said.
Washington has ''not had a better partner in the war on terrorism than the Pakistanis,'' and events of the past few weeks have deepened those ties, Hayden said.
But there has been no recent increase in CIA engagement in the region, despite nervousness over the increasing instability of the nuclear-armed state, Hayden said.
''The Afghan-Pakistan border region has been an area of focus for this agency since about 11 o'clock in the morning of September 11, (2001), and I really mean this,'' Hayden was quoted as saying.
''We haven't done a whole lot of retooling there in the last one week, one month, three months, six months and so on.
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