Pakistan weekly spills 9/11 beans
New Delhi, March 12[2006]: The Pakistan
foreign
office had paid tens of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in the US to
get anti-Pakistan references dropped from the 9/11 inquiry commission
report, The Friday Times has claimed.
The Pakistani weekly said its story is based
on
disclosures made by foreign service officials to the Public Accounts
Committee at a secret meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday.
It claimed that some of the commission members
were
also bribed to prevent them from including damaging information about
Pakistan.
The magazine said the PAC grilled officials in
the
presence of foreign secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan and special secretary
Sher Afghan on the money paid to lobbyists.
“The disclosure sheds doubt on the integrity
and
honesty of the members of the 9/11 inquiry commission and, above all,
the authenticity of the information in their final report,” it said.
The report quoted an officer as saying that
dramatic
changes were made in the final draft of the inquiry commission after
the lobbyists got to work. The panel was formed to probe the September
11 terror attack and make suggestions to fight terrorism.
After the commission tipped the lobbyists
about the
damaging revelations on Pakistan’s role in 9/11, they contacted the
panel members and asked them to go soft on the country. The Friday
Times claimed that a lot of money was used to silence these members.
According to the report, the lobbyists also
helped
Pakistan win the sympathy of 75 US Congressmen as part of its strategy
to guard Islamabad’s interests in Washington. “US softened towards
Pakistan only because of the efforts of the foreign office,” an
official was quoted as saying in the report.
The Pakistan foreign office defended the
decision to hire the lobbyists, saying it was an established practice
in the US.
An observer at the Islamabad meeting said
money
could play an important role in buying powerful people. The remark came
in response to comments made by some US officials after 9/11 that
“Pakistanis will sell their mothers for a dollar”.
Pakistan had emerged as front-runner in the
fight
against terrorism unleashed by the US after the terror strikes.
Washington pumped in billions of dollars to win President Pervez
Musharraf’s support in launching a crackdown on al Qaida network
thriving on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.