[NYTr] Bhutto dossier: ‘ISI diverted US aid for fighting militants to rig elections’

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Times of London - Jan 1, 2008
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3116090.ece


The Benazir Bhutto dossier: 

‘[Pakistan] secret service was diverting US aid for
fighting militants to rig the elections’

by Jeremy Page in Naudero

On the day she was assassinated, Benazir Bhutto was due to meet two 
senior American politicians to show them a confidential report alleging 
that Pakistan’s intelligence service was using US money to rig 
parliamentary elections, officials in her party said yesterday.

The report was compiled by the former Prime Minister’s own contacts 
within the security services and alleged that the Inter-Services 
Intelligence agency was running the election operation from a safe
house in the capital, Islamabad, they said. The operation’s aim was to 
undermine Ms Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and to ensure 
victory for the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) party, which supports 
President Musharraf, in the elections scheduled for January 8.

Patrick Kennedy, a Democratic congressman for Rhode Island, and Arlen 
Specter, a Republican member of the Senate sub-committe on foreign 
operations, have confirmed that they were planning to have dinner with 
Ms Bhutto on Thursday evening but were not available for comment
yesterday.

“But there is another report relating to the ISI and she was going to 
discuss it with them,” said Mr Lashari, an envi-ronmental economist who 
taught at Cranfield University for several years.

The second report, which Ms Bhutto did not plan to release to the
media, alleged that the ISI was using some of the $10 billion (£5
billion) in US military aid that Pakistan has received since 2001 to
run a covert election operation from a safe house in G5, a central
district of Islamabad, he said.

“The report was done by some people who we’ve got in the services. They 
directly dealt with Benazir Bhutto,” he continued, adding that Ms
Bhutto was planning to share the contents of the report with the
British Ambassador as well as the US lawmakers.

Asif Ali Zardari, Ms Bhutto’s widower and the new co-chairman of the 
PPP, confirmed the existence of the report, its basic contents and Ms 
Bhutto’s plans to meet the US lawmakers last Thursday. Asked if such a 
report was in his possession, he said: “Something to that effect.”
Asked if Ms Bhutto was planning to share its contents with the American 
legislators, he said: “I am not in a position to make an answer to 
that.” Asked if the report contained evidence that the ISI was using US 
funds to rig the elections, he said: “Possibly so.” He declined to give 
further details, but said the confidential report could have been one
of several motives for killing Ms Bhutto, who died after a suicide-bomb
and gun attack on an election rally near Islamabad. “It was a general 
combination of all of these things. The fact that she’s on the ground 
exposing everybody, I guess, would have been one reason. There are many 
views and many reasons one can think of for her assassination.”

The allegation is likely to fuel the already intense speculation 
surrounding the death, which triggered nationwide riots and raised
fears that President Musharraf could reimpose emergency rule and
postpone the elections.

Electoral fraud is nothing new in Pakistan, which has been led by 
military rulers for more than half of its 60-year history, and whose 
politics is dominated by feudal and tribal loyalties. In 1996 a former 
army chief called Mirza Aslam Baig alleged in court that he had been 
aware of a secret ISI political cell that distributed funds to antiPPP 
candidates in the run-up to the 1990-1991 elections.

Ms Bhutto had often accused President Musharraf, who seized power in a 
coup in 1999, of rigging elections and there have been reports that 
foreign financial aid to Pakistan’s Central Election Commission was 
being used to fix the result of next month’s poll.

However, the report that Ms Bhutto allegedly planned to share with the 
US politicians made the more serious allegation that the ISI was 
directly involved in rigging the coming parliamentary elections – and 
was using American money to do it. The United States has given Pakistan 
at least $10 billion in military aid since President Musharraf agreed
to back the War on Terror after the September 11 attacks.

The money was supposed to be used to help Pakistan’s armed forces to 
fight al-Qaeda and Taleban militants sheltering in northwestern tribal 
areas near the porous border with Afghan-istan. But there has been 
almost no accounting for the funds, most of which have been transferred 
in cash directly to the Defence Ministry, and critics of President 
Musharraf say that much has been diverted towards other aims, such as 
upgrading forces on the border with India, or into private pockets.

This month the US Congress ordered the Government to withhold a portion 
of military aid to Pakistan until President Musharraf demonstrated 
progress in the campaign against the militants and in a transition 
towards civilian, democratic rule.

Mr Lashari, the PPP official, said that Ms Bhutto wanted to share the 
report with them because she did not entirely trust the US Government, 
which still regards President Musharraf as a key ally in the War on 
Terror. “The idea was to discuss it with all the international 
stakeholders, mainly including Britain and the United States, but we 
didn’t want to share it with anyone who could use it against us,” he
said.

“It would be unwise to do anything that would annoy Musharraf. and the 
international stakeholders. Everything could collapse if the Army comes 
to know that there is something substantial against them. It’s
dangerous to name people in Pakistan.” Pakistani media reports have
alleged the existence of an ISI safe house used to rig the elections
and identified Ijaz Hussain Shah, a retired general who heads the
civilian Intelligence Bureau, as one of those involved.

Mr Lashari also said that Ms Bhutto was planning to show the report
with the British Ambassador, Robert Brin-kley. A spokesman for the
British Embassy denied any knowledge of the report. The ISI does not
have a spokes-person, but a government official dismissed the
allegations as baseless.