The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) secretly trained and equipped approximately 60 commandos from the Pakistani intelligence to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in 1999, but the plot failed because of a military coup in Pakistan, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Citing sources familiar with the operation, the report said the operation was arranged by then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with the Clinton administration. In return, U.S. promised to lift sanctions on Pakistan and provide an economic aid package. The plan was aborted later that year when Sharif was ousted in a military coup.
The plan was set in motion less than 12 months after U.S. cruise missile strikes against suspected terrorist training camps in Afghanistan as a retaliation for the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
The Pakistani commando team was up and running and ready to strike by October 1999. The operation, however, was aborted on October 12, 1999, when Sharif was overthrown by General Pervez Musharaf, who refused to continue the operation despite substantial efforts by the Clinton administration to revive it.
In addition to the Pakistan operation, President Bill Clinton the year before had also approved additional covert action for the CIA to work with groups inside Afghanistan and with other foreign intelligence services to capture or kill bin Laden, the Washington Post said.
The U.S. accused bin Laden of masterminding the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 as well as the attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
(Xinhua News Agency 10/04/2001)
