Pak Taliban spokesman arrested

Peshawar, Sep.11 (ANI) The Pakistan Government on Friday announced that it had arrested the chief spokesman of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, Muslim Khan.

Khan was formerly a commander and spokesman of the Swat Taliban.

“Muslim Khan and Mahmood Khan with head money of 10 million rupees (120,482 US dollars) have been arrested by security forces in a successful operation in Swat,’ military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said in a statement.

Muslim Khan was second on the most-wanted list behind Mullah Fazlullah. He earned notoriety as the hardline Taliban spokesman in Swat but was largely impossible to reach after the military launched its summer ground and air assault.

Mahmood Khan was number four on the most-wanted list, described as commander of Kuza Banda in northern Swat.

“Along with them, three other terrorist leaders Fazle Ghaffar, Abdul Rehman and Sartaj have been also been apprehended,” the Dawn quoted Major General Abbas, as saying.

Pakistan says more than 1,900 militants and over 167 security personnel were killed in the offensive but the tolls are impossible to verify independently.

Answering a question on Muslim Khan’s arrest, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said it should be seen as a national success. (ANI)

Pak planned to attack India in ’98: Book

Pakistan was ready to launch a full-fledged air assault on “pre-selected targets” in India in 1998 had New Delhi tried to disrupt its nuclear tests, former foreign minister Gohar Ayub Khan reveals in a new book.

In his book titled Testing Times as Foreign Minister, Khan reveals that in the event of an attack on the test site at Chagai by India, attack by the Pakistan Air Force would have been launched on pre-selected targets in India.

“Pakistan had information and blueprints of the Indian nuclear projects given gratis after the 1984 attack on the Golden Temple,” The News daily quoted the book as saying.

Once the decision that Pakistan would test, Five Punjab Sherdil left for Quetta to secure the Chagai test site.

They had been guarding the Kahuta project in the mid-80s when there was a threat of an attack on the project by India or Israel or a possible combination of the two, Khan says.

He says since Pakistan became a nuclear state, the chances of a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan seem to be a very remote possibility but a localised conflict, which is maintained within a certain threshold and does not lead to an open war, cannot be ruled out in future.