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Pakistan to Buy Suicide Bomber Detection Equipment From China
By Michael Heath
Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan plans to buy Chinese-made equipment to detect suicide bombers as President Pervez Musharraf said al-Qaeda couldn't seize control of the nuclear-armed nation.
The government will purchase devices including ``scanners to detect'' attackers with explosive material, Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz Khan told the official Associated Press of Pakistan in an interview in the capital, Islamabad, yesterday. The equipment will be installed at entry and exit points in major cities, he said.
Al-Qaeda is ``neither militarily so strong that they can defeat our army, with its 600,000 soldiers, nor politically -- and they do not stand a chance of winning elections,'' APP cited Musharraf as telling international journalists. He said the movement was masterminding suicide bombings in Pakistan.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, in an audio message released in September, called on Pakistanis to rebel against their government to avenge an army assault on Islamabad's Red Mosque in July that ended a challenge by clerics wanting to impose Islamic law in the city. Terrorist bombings and attacks killed more than 800 people in Pakistan in the past six months.
Musharraf rejected a suggestion that individuals in Pakistan's security services who sympathize with religious extremists could infiltrate the nation's nuclear program.
The Inter-Service Intelligence unit was forced to expel dozens of officers who trained militants to operate for the agency in Afghanistan and the Kashmir region because they came to sympathize with their students' views, the New York Times said yesterday, citing an unidentified former agency official.
When Musharraf allied Pakistan with the Bush administration in its war against terrorism in 2001, the ISI couldn't rein in militants it had nurtured for decades, according to the report. Pakistan supported Afghanistan's Taliban regime until the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S.
Nuclear Arsenal
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal ``is accounted for. Terrorists could not even take a bolt from a rifle,'' Musharraf said in the interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, according to APP.
``One thing is for sure,'' said Musharraf, who has survived at least four assassination attempts by extremists since 2001, ``fanatics can never take over Pakistan.''
Three militants accused of plotting to kill Musharraf in a failed car bombing in the southern city of Karachi in April 2002 were sentenced to life imprisonment, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported yesterday.
The three may have been members of Harkat ul-Mujahedeen al- Almi, an alleged offshoot of al-Qaeda, the BBC said.
By Michael Heath
Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan plans to buy Chinese-made equipment to detect suicide bombers as President Pervez Musharraf said al-Qaeda couldn't seize control of the nuclear-armed nation.
The government will purchase devices including ``scanners to detect'' attackers with explosive material, Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz Khan told the official Associated Press of Pakistan in an interview in the capital, Islamabad, yesterday. The equipment will be installed at entry and exit points in major cities, he said.
Al-Qaeda is ``neither militarily so strong that they can defeat our army, with its 600,000 soldiers, nor politically -- and they do not stand a chance of winning elections,'' APP cited Musharraf as telling international journalists. He said the movement was masterminding suicide bombings in Pakistan.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, in an audio message released in September, called on Pakistanis to rebel against their government to avenge an army assault on Islamabad's Red Mosque in July that ended a challenge by clerics wanting to impose Islamic law in the city. Terrorist bombings and attacks killed more than 800 people in Pakistan in the past six months.
Musharraf rejected a suggestion that individuals in Pakistan's security services who sympathize with religious extremists could infiltrate the nation's nuclear program.
The Inter-Service Intelligence unit was forced to expel dozens of officers who trained militants to operate for the agency in Afghanistan and the Kashmir region because they came to sympathize with their students' views, the New York Times said yesterday, citing an unidentified former agency official.
When Musharraf allied Pakistan with the Bush administration in its war against terrorism in 2001, the ISI couldn't rein in militants it had nurtured for decades, according to the report. Pakistan supported Afghanistan's Taliban regime until the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S.
Nuclear Arsenal
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal ``is accounted for. Terrorists could not even take a bolt from a rifle,'' Musharraf said in the interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, according to APP.
``One thing is for sure,'' said Musharraf, who has survived at least four assassination attempts by extremists since 2001, ``fanatics can never take over Pakistan.''
Three militants accused of plotting to kill Musharraf in a failed car bombing in the southern city of Karachi in April 2002 were sentenced to life imprisonment, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported yesterday.
The three may have been members of Harkat ul-Mujahedeen al- Almi, an alleged offshoot of al-Qaeda, the BBC said.
