Report on Pakistan's role in Afghan war angers Islamic leaders

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A U.S. military report giving new details on Pakistani help during the war to oust Afghanistan's Taliban regime angered Islamic leaders Tuesday, who argued the government wasn't honest about the extent of its assistance.

Leaders of hard-line religious parties threatened to call street demonstrations to protest the revelations. Some urged the resignation of Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S. campaign against terrorist groups.

The critics focused on figures in a U.S. Central Command's report saying that 57,800 air missions over Afghanistan crossed Pakistani air space or originated on Pakistani soil and that 8,000 U.S. Marines used a Pakistan port as a transit point to the war zone.

The hard-liners, already angry over Musharraf's siding with Washington, said the report contradicted the government's statements that operations of the U.S.-led coalition in Pakistan would be limited and would involve only supply and rescue missions.

Pakistan's military and the Foreign Ministry both refused to comment.

"The hands of our rulers are stained with the blood of Muslims," said Ameer-ul Azeem, a spokesman for Jamaat-e-Islami, one of six Islamic parties in a coalition that governs two provinces bordering Afgha-nistan where sympathy for the Taliban is strong.

Islamic hard-liners have made political gains since the government ended Pakistan's support for the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks and backed the U.S.-led war on the Afghan regime for refusing to surrender Osama bin Laden and shut down al-Qaida training camps.

At the time, Musharraf said Pakistan's help would be limited to allowing U.S. planes to fly over Pakistan, permitting an unspecified number of airfields to be used for supplying troops in Afghanistan but not for staging attacks, and providing fuel for coalition military aircraft.

In a first detailing of that help, a report on Central Command's Web site said Pakistan turned five airfields over for use by the U.S.-led coalition and reserved two-thirds of the country's air space for coalition flights.

It said those steps allowed 57,800 coalition flights to be "generated from Pakistan's air space/soil." The report didn't say combat aircraft were based in Pakistan, however. It also didn't say how many of those 57,800 flights were combat missions, but most of the warplanes that attacked in Afghanistan flew over Pakistan.

Additionally, the report said Pakistan's navy provided landing facilities at Pasni, on the Arabian Sea, for U.S. troops. In all, it said, 8,000 Marines, 330 vehicles and 1,350 tons of equipment and supplies unloaded at Pasni and were then flown to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.

The report was first reproduced in the Pakistani newspaper Nawa-e-Waqt on Monday, and accounts of it appeared in other papers Tuesday, along with complaints from Islamic religious leaders.

The Central Command later cut off access to the report, "for an update," said Lt. Col. Martin Compton, a Central Command spokesman at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.

Compton declined to comment on the report's contents. "All of what is on the country's site is what the countries give to us," he said in a telephone interview.

Kamal Matinuddin, a retired general who is now a political analyst, predicted the report wouldn't cause Musharraf significant problems. He said the war was 18 months ago and "people are more worried about domestic issues today."

Fazl-ur Rahman, chief of Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam, another party in the religious political coalition, said Pakistan's leaders "kept saying that they have not given our air bases to America to attack Afghanistan," and now "this report has exposed the real faces of our rulers."

Religious leaders also voiced anger over the Central Command saying that Pakistan's economy had lost an estimated $10 billion due to the Afghan campaign's adverse effects on tourism, exports and foreign investment.

However, because of its help, Pakistan had at least $1 billion in debt to the United States written off, received $1 billion in international aid and had repayment of $32 billion in foreign debt stretched out. As a result its foreign currency holdings are the highest ever, nearly $12 billion, and the government is talking about possibly weaning itself from International Monetary Fund loans by next year.

Musharraf's support for the U.S. anti-terrorism campaign fomented anti-American sentiment and gave the religious coalition a groundswell of support in October elections.

The religious parties now rule in Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province and their leaders have publicly promised refuge to Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.

Over the objections of the religious hard-liners, the government has arrested more than 500 al-Qaida and Taliban members and handed most of them over to the United States.

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On the Net

U.S. Central Command: http://www.centcom.mil

Google's cached Centcom/Pakistan site: http://216.239.39.100/search?qcache:XmYP5MAh6JkJ:www.centcom.mil/Op erationsCoalition/Coalition--pages/pakistan/htm%2B&hlen&ieUTF-8