Mullah Omar asked Musharraf to bomb Kandahar, US cable reveals
The Dawn
WASHINGTON: The late Taliban leader Mullah Omar asked the Musharraf government to bring in weapons and bomb Kandahar if it did not like Taliban policies, reveals a secret US cable released by the State Department, reports The Dawn.
Pervez Musharraf, who was then the countrys chief executive, conveyed this message to then US Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering at a meeting in Islamabad on March 26, 2000.
In the meeting, the chief executive referred to the recent visit of DG ISI Gen Mahmud to Kandahar as evidence of what it was like to deal with the Taliban.
Mullah Omar told Mahmud he was sorry that Taliban policies were causing Pakistan problems and suggested that if (Islamabad) did not like (those policies), it might want to bring in its weapons and begin shelling Kandahar, Gen Musharraf told Pickering.
Know more: After Mullah Omar: This is not the end of war When Musharraf urged the US to engage with the Taliban directly, Pickering said the US had been engaging with the Taliban at multiple venues on repeated occasions, in Washington, New York and Islamabad.
Pickering said the fact that Pakistan was the strongest supporter of the Taliban, was of particular concern to the US.
This presented us with the anomaly of a good friend being the best friend of our worst enemy. This was an abscess on our relationship that would only get worse and worse. Pickering said the US understood why Gen Musharraf did not want to go to Kandahar without being able to bring back concrete results. But it was important that he recognise that the Bin Laden issue was eating away at our relationship. Musharraf replied that he was well aware of US concerns and was personally engaged in dealing with the Taliban on three major issues.
The first was terrorist training camps and the sanctuary being given by the Taliban to Pakistani terrorists and criminals. The second was the peace issue. And the third was Osama Bin Laden.
The former chief executive said that Osama Bin Laden was the one area where progress was not being made. He noted he had recently met the visiting Taliban interior minister, who had exhibited a little bit of flexibility on the issue.
The minister had indicated the possibility of constituting an Ulema council, bringing together religious scholars from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and perhaps the OIC, to consider the evidence against Bin Laden.
