Arrests in Germany turn focus on Pakistan terror camps
The US News (IANS) Friday 7th September, 2007
The arrest in Germany this week of three suspects in an alleged plot to blow up US military and civilian targets has again raised the spectre of terrorist training camps in Pakistan that groom killers to wreak havoc in the Western world.
The claimed existence in the remote tribal belt near the Afghanistan border of centres run by Taliban insurgents, Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network and other Islamic extremist groups is not new.
US intelligence agencies assert that such facilities exist and regular visits to Pakistan by top administration officials have focussed on the need for counter-terrorism ally President Pervez Musharraf to ensure they are eradicated.
But while acknowledging that terrorist and insurgent 'elements' are present in the tribal areas, Islamabad sharply rejects claims that bin Laden's network in particular has reconstituted itself there and is now coordinating global operations from Pakistani soil.
'There are no terrorist training camps (here), whether Al Qaeda or anyone else's,' Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said after officials in Germany Wednesday announced the arrests of two German converts to Islam and a Turkish Muslim suspected of planning attacks.
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