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Pakistani Opposition Leaders Snub Zawahiri
Arab News, Agencies
ISLAMABAD, 30 September 2003 — Pakistan’s Islamic and opposition leaders yesterday rejected calls attributed to Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 to overthrow President Pervez Musharraf for betraying Islam.
The country’s largest Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which campaigns fervently against Musharraf’s unelected presidency and sweeping powers, dismissed the calls attributed to Ayman Al-Zawahiri as violent.
“We do not subscribe to Zawahiri’s or anyone else’s views,” Jamaat Sen. Khurshid Ahmed said. “We have strong differences with Musharraf’s policies and are democratically trying to influence him to bring a change. We have our own strategy of Islamic restructuring and it is through power of the ballot and a democratic struggle,” he said.
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam leader Fazlur Rehman — once openly supportive of the hard-line Taleban regime that was ousted from neighboring Afghanistan in late 2001 — also rejected the calls.
“We don’t need guidelines from Zawahiri or any other leaders from outside,” he said.
The calls were made in tapes broadcast by Arab TV channels Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera in which the speaker, purportedly Zawahiri, called Musharraf a “traitor” for helping US-led forces topple the Taleban, considering sending troops to Iraq and considering recognizing of Israel.
Pakistan’s radical Jamaat Al-Dawa organization, the political wing of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, said the authenticity of the tape was yet to be proven.
“It is not suitable to comment unless the authenticity of the audiotape is verified,” spokesman Yahya Mujahid said.
The government dismissed Zawahiri’s threat and said the war against “terrorism” would continue. “Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization,” Masood Khan, Foreign Ministry spokesman, told a news conference. “Pakistan is part of the war on terrorism and the pursuit of terrorists, Al-Qaeda and their associates will continue despite these threats,” he added.
Khan said the purpose of the tape was to deliberately mislead Pakistanis and Muslims about Musharraf, who was a “bridge” between the Islamic world and the West.
Al-Jazeera television said yesterday that the audiotape was received by telephone from Pakistan. “An anonymous caller from Pakistan contacted us to offer Ayman Al-Zawahiri’s message,” said Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout.
“The message was recorded by telephone and broadcast immediately,” he added.
Al-Arabiya refused to provide any detail about how it acquired the recording.
The outburst against Musharraf was strikingly similar to attacks on the Pakistani leader in another audiotape attributed to Zawahiri by Al-Jazeera on the eve of the second anniversary of 9/11.
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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