[ALOCHONA] Pakistan spy chief to brief parliament on security

Pakistan spy chief to brief parliament on security Pakistan's new military spy chief was set to brief lawmakers on the internal security threat, and conflict in tribal lands seen as al Qaeda and Taliban havens, in a rare closed door session of parliament on Wednesday. "It will help evolve a national consensus and formulate a national policy on how to tackle growing terrorism and extremism," Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar told Reuters. "Everybody knows the security situation in the country," he said, as troops sealed off roads leading to parliament and government buildings, and helicopters hovered over Islamabad. The nuclear-armed state is reeling from a fresh wave of bomb attacks after a lull that followed an election in February that brought a civilian government to power and signalled the end of the road for former army chief Pervez Musharraf's presidency. A suicide truck bomb that killed 55 people and destroyed the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Sept. 20 delivered a fresh shock to a country whose best known politician, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated in a suicide bomb and gun attack last December. The six-month old coalition, headed by Bhutto's party, is under pressure from its U.S. ally to use more force against the militants fuelling the insurgency in Afghanistan, and harbouring Al Qaeda planners plotting attacks in the West.   Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shujaa Pasha, who was appointed director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence last week, was briefing an in-camera joint session of the two houses of parliament before taking questions from lawmakers. It is only the third time a joint session of parliament is being held in-camera since 1974, but the press gallery was empty.A brewing economic crisis is also threatening to overwhelm the government headed by President Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's widower, who succeeded Musharraf after he quit in August. How to handle Pakistan regularly features in debates between U.S. presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama.Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, a senator for the Jamaat-e-Islami party, told Reuters America was to blame for Pakistan's problems. "It wants to grab everything and make everyone its slave and unfortunately our weak leadership has not been able to resist." Pakistan has protested against intensified U.S. missile attacks on militant targets in the tribal lands and in particular against a U.S. commando raid in early September. Pakistani security forces have launched an offensive in the strategically located Bajaur region, and estimate that more than 1,000 militants have been killed there since early August.At the other end of the tribal belt, the army has bottled up fighters loyal to Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in the mountain fastness of South Waziristan. The army has also been engaged in fierce battles in Swat, an alpine valley in the northwest that was a favoured tourist destination until late last year. Operations have also been carried out in tribal areas around Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, as militants have become bolder about entering the city. RAISING INDIAN SPECTRE? The new government and army chief General Ashfaq Kayani have been at pains to work together, although a botched attempt to put the ISI under Interior Ministry control caused brief unease. The ISI has been under a cloud since U.S. officials and India accused the agency of involvement in a suicide attack that killed nearly 60 people outside the Indian embassy in Kabul last July.Pakistan has denied the allegations. But fears abound that India's friendship with the Afghan government poses a risk of encirclement, and Pakistani generals are frustrated by America ignoring their strategic concerns. Some say privately that there will never be peace in the region until foreign forces leave the ethnic Pashtun lands straddling the Pakistan-Afghan border and their former allies, the Taliban, are allowed some say in Kabul.Talk of India stirring unrest in the tribal areas has become common currency in military circles, though the government wants to pursue an almost 5-year-old peace process.   http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-35851420081008?sp=true

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