PAKISTAN'S INVOLVEMENT IN NARCO-TERRORISM -- (BY JOHN WARD ANDERSON AND KAMRAN KHAN) (Extension of Remarks - October 03, 1994)

[Page: E2044]

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HON. FRANK PALLONE, JR.

in the House of Representatives

MONDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1994

[FROM THE WASHINGTON POST, SEPT. 12, 1994]

(BY JOHN WARD ANDERSON AND KAMRAN KHAN)

Karachi, Pakistan--Pakistan's army chief and the head of its intelligence agency proposed a detailed `blueprint' for selling heroin to pay for the country's covert military operations in early 1991, according to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

In an interview, Sharif claimed that three months after his election as prime minister in November 1990, Gen. Aslam Beg, then army chief of staff, and Gen. Asad Durrani, then head of the military's Inter-Services Intelligence bureau (ISI), told him the armed forces needed more money for covert foreign operations and wanted to raise it through large-scale drug deals.

`General Durrani told me, `We have a blueprint ready for your approval,' said Sharif, who lost to Benazir Bhutto in elections last October and is now leader of the opposition in parliament.

`I was totally flabbergasted,' Sharif said, adding that he called Beg a few days later to order the army officially not to launch the drug trafficking plan.

Beg, who retired in August 1991, denied Sharif's allegation, saying, `We have never been so irresponsible at any stage. Our politicians, when they're not in office and in the opposition, they say so many things. There's just no truth to it.'

Durrani, now Pakistan's ambassador to Germany, said, `This is a preposterous thing for a former prime minister to say. I know nothing about it. We never ever talked on this subject at all.'

Brig. Gen. S.M.A. Iqbal, a spokesman for the armed forces, said. `It's inconceivable and highly derogatory; such a thing could not happen.'

The interview with Sharif, conducted at his home in Lahore in May, was part of a broad investigation into narcotics trafficking in Pakistan. It marked the first time a senior Pakistani official has publicly accused the country's military of having contingency plans to pay for covert operations through drug smuggling.

Officials with the U.S. State Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration said they have no evidence that Pakistan's military is or ever has been involved in drug trafficking. But U.S. and other officials have often complained about the country's weak efforts to curtail the spread of guns, money laundering, official corruption and other elements of the deep-rooted drug culture in Pakistan, which along with Afghanistan and Iran lies along the so-called Golden Crescent, one of the world's biggest drug-producing regions.


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