Word: islamabad
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...Islamabad, top military and intelligence officials in the government of President Pervez Musharraf held a series of intense meetings. They sized up their options and decided to throw in their lot with the Americans, despite concerns over the reaction on the street. Pakistani officials, sources say, realized that the U.S. action against bin Laden was likely to be "massive and indiscriminate" and saw little reason that their own nation should want to be collateral damage. Musharraf, said Rifaat Hussain, a defense expert at an Islamabad university, "can either swim with the international current or sink with the Taliban." The decision...
...road to Kabul runs through Islamabad. And that's bad news for Pakistan's military government, which faces a profound identity crisis over U.S. requests for assistance against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. While General Pervez Musharraf has promised support for U.S. efforts against terrorism, it has also vowed not to participate in any military actions beyond its own borders. And while Pakistan will likely allow the U.S. to use its airspace to strike against targets in Afghanistan, it remains to be seen whether it will act against Pakistani organizations allied with Bin Laden, or allow...
...Pakistan's prot?g?, and many Pakistanis are fiercely supportive of both the Afghan militia and of Bin Laden himself. But Pakistan's key traditional allies - the United States and China, which is facing a Bin Laden-backed insurgency in its Muslim western provinces - have made clear that they expect Islamabad to do its bit for the international campaign against terrorism...
...Laden reportedly killed five Pakistani intelligence officers and a number of Kashmiri fighters. And many of these groups identify with the Taliban and Bin Laden. Fierce support for the Kashmir insurgency remains an article of faith in Pakistani politics, but that has put the U.S. increasingly at loggerheads with Islamabad. For example, two of the key Kashmiri militant groups have been placed on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations, but Pakistani authorities have been less than fully cooperative with U.S. requests to rein in these groups and to put pressure on the Taliban to hand over Bin Laden...
...commitment to the Taliban - the latter, together with Bin Laden himself, far more popular on the impassioned streets of Pakistan. Supporting U.S. military action against Bin Laden and the Taliban will inevitably spark a dangerous domestic backlash in Pakistan. But failing to support the U.S. effort will leave Islamabad dangerously isolated. General Musharraf finds himself at a crossroads, and very soon, something will have to give...