US terrorism alert dismissed as Obama politicking
Israel is a US client state and now we have confirmation that Washington essentially begged Tel Aviv to continue the illusion of a “settlement freeze” over the moribund “peace talks”. God help the Middle East.
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US terrorism alert dismissed as Obama politicking
Simon Tisdall and Richard Norton-Taylor
October 9, 2010
LONDON: A US terrorism alert issued this week about al-Qaeda plots to attack targets in Western Europe was politically motivated and not based on credible new information, senior Pakistani diplomats and European intelligence officials say.
The warning, which despite its vagueness led Britain, France and other countries to raise their terrorism alert levels, was an attempt to justify a recent escalation in US drone and helicopter attacks inside Pakistan that have ''set the country on fire'', said Pakistan's high commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hasan.
Mr Hasan, a veteran diplomat who is close to Pakistan's President, Asif Ali Zardari, suggested the US President, Barack Obama, was playing politics with the alert before next month's mid-term congressional elections.
He also said Mr Obama was reacting to pressure to demonstrate that his Afghan war strategy and this year's troop surge, which are unpopular with the American public, were necessary.
''Such reports are a mixture of frustrations, ineptitude and lack of appreciation of ground realities,'' Mr Hassan said.
Dismissing claims of a developed, co-ordinated plot aimed at Britain, France and Germany, European intelligence officials also pointed the finger at the US, and specifically at the White House.
''To stitch together [the terrorist plot claims] in a seamless narrative is nonsensical,'' said one well-placed official.
While Abdul Jabbar, a Briton, and others killed by US drone strike on September 8 in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area were heard discussing co-ordinated plots, including possible ''commando-style'' attacks on prominent buildings and tourist sites in European capitals, security and intelligence officials said the plots were nowhere near fruition.
By making it clear that the US drone strikes were pre-emptive and were not in any way combating an imminent threat, European officials raised fresh questions about the legality of the attacks, which could be viewed as assassinations.
They said Washington was the ''driver'' behind claims about a series of ''commando-style'' plots and that the CIA - perhaps because it was worried about provoking unwelcome attention to its drone strikes - was also extremely annoyed by the publicity given to them.
Western intelligence agencies had been aware of the plot claims for months.
The German Interior Minister, Thomas de Maiziere, publicly expressed his scepticism about the US terrorism warning, describing the danger to Germany as ''hypothetical''.
The sharp rise in US unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas, coupled with several cross-border raids by US helicopter gunships, was destabilising Pakistan, Mr Hasan said. ''It is a threat to the democratic system.''
Mr Hasan said US politicians failed to understand how much the US needed Pakistan in the ''war on terror''. Nor did they realise that public anger over repeated US infringements of Pakistani sovereignty could boil over into attacks on American personnel and interests.
''The government does not want to go down this road,'' he said. ''But people feel abused. If they [the Americans] kill someone again, they [people] will react … There are 3000 American personnel in Pakistan. They would be very easy targets.''
Guardian News & Media
