Pakistan wanted to attack US: Bhutto

Islamabad: In a startling revelation former Pakistani minister Benazir Bhutto said that during her tenure some Arab militant leaders and Pakistani generals, in association with Osama bin Laden, had planned to wage a war against the US.

She claimed that Osama had started his endeavour to pull down her Government after she vetoed the plan.

“Ramzi Yusuf (the mastermind behind the first World Trade Centre attacks in the US) tried to assassinate me,” Bhutto said.

Ramzi, she said, had toyed with the idea of the attack way back in 1990’s and the US had then sought cooperation of her Government.

“I offered to the US authorities to set up the FBI office in Pakistan in 1993 so that effective action could be launched to eliminate terrorism. As a result Ramzi Yousuf was arrested.”

She also said that the Saudi King had told her in 1989 that he declined to provide money to destabilise her Government and terrorist activities started following the dissolution of her Government in 1990.

“The adviser to Saudi king told one of my ministers that Osama provided $10 million for toppling my government, ” she added.

In the 2002 elections, Musharraf had announced that if her Pakistan People Party (PPP) won the elections, it would be invited to form the Government.

But in her absence “General Musharraf did not allow the party to form the government eventhough it had won,” she recalls.

He made all efforts to split her party and formed a government headed by Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali with one vote majority.

Bhutto is certain that President Musharraf will not apprehend Osama as it would amount to “political suicide” and he will have to seize the justification of his rule.

Musharraf, during the Tora Bora operation, had told the US to leave the chase of Bin Laden to him but failed to keep his promise.

Osama re-established camps and started recruiting people after the dissolution of her Government in 1996 she said.

Military dictatorship prevailed in Pakistan and there was no system of check and balance in the country Bhutto added.

Chief of Pakistan Jamat-e-Islami party Qazi Hussain Ahmad recently said in an interview that Osama tried to topple Bhutto government by ‘buying’ members of parliament to make her rival Nawaz Sharif the Prime Minister but gave up the plan mid-way.

Bhutto, who lives in self-exile, appeared in an interview with her husband Asif Ali Zardari. It was aired as a court in Islamabad issued summons to her and Zardari to appear before it on June 3 in a case filed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

The summons came as she recently met Sharif in London and tried to forge a political alliance to context the next polls.