Musharraf warns US over Bajaur

    Islamabad: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has warned the US that it should not repeat incidents like the Bajaur air attacks in future. He said Pakistan was extending cooperation to the US for the war on global terror only "on the basis of principles". The air attacks launched from across the Afghanistan border which killed nearly 18 people in Bajaur tribal agency, has attracted a lot of criticism from various quarters of the Pakistani society, especially the Islamic organisations, which say that the US had informed the Pakistan administration beforehand about their planned attacks.

   Musharraf said that he would do his every bit to safeguard Pakistan's national interests and solidarity at any cost. "Such incidents should not occur in the future. "We have waged the war on terror on the basis of established principles, but we cannot jeopardise our own national interests and will keep aloft national solidarity," The News quoted him as saying while talking to the visiting Australian Army Chief, Lt-Gen Petter Leha yesterday.

Top Al-Qaeda leader killed in Bajaur attack

    The US State Department has said that Midhat Mursi alias Abu Khabab al-Masri, a top Al-Qaeda bomb-maker carrying an award of five millions on his head, was reportedly killed in the January 13 CIA air strikes in Bajaur. The slain militant was on the US State Department's list of wanted Al-Qaeda leaders. Mursi used to run a terrorist training camp in Derunta in Afghanistan where hundreds of militants were trained in the use of poisons and explosives, The News quoted the US television network - ABC - as saying in a report telecast yesterday.

    It said Pakistani officials identified the dead al Qaeda leader as Midhat Mursi (52) who was also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, and who produced training manuals with recipes for crude chemicals and biological weapons, some of which were recovered by US forces in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the Pakistani paper also quoted the country's investigators as saying that they had found two empty graves at the site of the air strike, Bajaur, a day after officials said that four- five foreign militants had also died in the attack. The Pakistani officials said that local militants might have shifted the bodies before their scheduled burial to stop Pakistani or US authorities from DNA testing the remains and finding out who was killed in Friday's missile attack. On the other hand, residents of Damadola village in Bajur tribal agency, however, have maintained that 18 civilians only had died in the attack at Bajaur and that no militants were in the area. One Pakistani daily had yesterday quoted the Bajaur tribal administration as saying that two local clerics - Maulana Faqir Mohammad and Maulana Liaqat - had removed the bodies of the foreign extremists who were killed in the attack in order to "suppress the actual reason of the attack".

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