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Pakistan rejects report of deal with US on Osama hunt

PLA Daily 2004-03-02

ISLAMABAD, March 1 (Xinhuanet) -- Pakistan Monday categorically rejected reports that it would allow US troops to use Pakistani territory to hunt for Osama bin Laden, the elusive al-Qaeda leader.

"These reports are absolutely absurd and baseless," Pakistani military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan told state-run Radio Pakistan while responding to a news report in weekly New Yorker magazine, which suggested that Pakistan has agreed to allow US troops inside its territory to hunt for Osama as a quid pro quoof pardoning of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Khan, father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, confessed early last month that he transferred nuclear know-how illegally to some foreign countries. However, he was granted a conditional pardon from President Pervez Musharraf.

The weekly magazine quoted an unnamed US intelligence official as saying that the allegedly planned deployment of US troops in Pakistan was linked with Musharraf's decision not to prosecute Khan.

"Pakistan will never trade its territorial sovereignty," the spokesman said, stressing that there has been no agreement to allow foreign troops to operate inside the Pakistani territory.

He added there has been no quid pro quo and Pakistan will never compromise its sovereignty for any other issue.

"Pakistan has made it clear that only the Pakistani troops will operate on our side of the territory," said the spokesman.

"Whatever decision we have taken about Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan was not the result of any deal. It was clearly a decision of the Pakistan government which was thought to be in our national interest," he noted.

Sultan said that the United States might be transferring its forces to Afghanistan but this had nothing to do with Pakistan.

The Pakistani and US troops, operating on separate sides of the 2,500 kilometer Pak-Afghan border, have launched a fresh spring offensive against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in a stepped-up bid to capture Osama.