Source: Zardari seeks civilian nuclear deal with China | The Australian
Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent | October 11, 2008
PAKISTAN President Asif Ali Zardari will visit China next week, during which he is expected to push for a civilian nuclear deal similar to that just concluded between Washington and New Delhi.
Mr Zardari will hold talks in Beijing with President Hu Jintao and will meet other Chinese leaders, including Premier Wen Jiabao and senior legislator Wu Bangguo.
The two countries, both rivals of neighbouring India, have been close allies for decades, and China is a leading source of investment and arms supplies for Pakistan.
The US agreement on civil nuclear co-operation, signed into law this week by US President George W. Bush, permits American businesses to sell nuclear fuel, technology and reactors to India in exchange for safeguards and UN inspections at India's civilian but not military nuclear plants.
News of Mr Zardari's impending China visit came as the controversial leader paid his first visit to the National Command Authority that controls the powerful warheads.
It also coincided with growing despair over Pakistan's battle against the burgeoning al-Qa'ida and Taliban-linked insurgency sweeping the country following the attack by a suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives on the hub of Islamabad's anti-terror effort - the headquarters of the capital's much-vaunted Anti-Terrorist Squad.
The attack has stunned the nation not just because of the symbolism of the target and the ability to penetrate the headquarters, but also because Islamabad was supposed to be in a security lockdown for a crisis "wartime" sitting of parliament currently under way.
"It's a joke," one senior Pakistani journalist told The Australian last night. "It's one thing to get into the Marriott hotel and blow it to smithereens, but surely being able to get into the heart of the anti-terror effort in the capital city when there is supposed to be a red alert and 'airtight' security means everything is now vulnerable. Nothing is safe. Even the nuclear command centre that Zardari visited must now be seen as potentially vulnerable to the terrorist threat."
Alarm at the security situation intensified yesterday when what was reported to be a "bearded man wearing a burqa" was detained while trying to board a flight at the newly named Benazir Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad. The state-run AAP news agency said he was suspected of being a suicide bomber.
Also yesterday, Pakistani intelligence agents began an investigation into the identities of up to eight foreigners believed killed in a suspected US missile strike close to the Afghan border.
The attack appeared to be part of a surge in alleged US assaults from Afghanistan on suspected militant targets in Pakistan that have strained ties between the two anti-terror allies.
The missile strike happened late on Thursday on a house in North Waziristan tribal region, according to two intelligence officials.
"Between six and eight foreigners were killed in the attack, but we don't know whether they were from al-Qa'ida and what was the purpose of their presence in the area," a third intelligence official from Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, said yesterday.
Frantic efforts were under way in the capital yesterday to further tighten security as the in-camera parliamentary session continued.
But even as the Government appealed to MPs to support its offensive against Islamic militancy, the country's leading religious scholars made an unscheduled direct appeal to MPs to support an end to the crackdown,
The religious scholars - whose views are likely to weigh heavily with the MPs in overwhelmingly Islamic Pakistan - offered no support to the current strategy of the crackdown, which involves the biggest military offensive seen in years in the Bajaur Tribal Agency and strategic Swat Valley north of Islamabad.
Instead, they appealed for reliance on religious scholars and "patriotic elders" to bring about peace.
