Pakistan's Musharraf resigns - hands ISI over to US?

[TonyGosling]

India fears Musharraf exit will unleash tension

NEW DELHI: Coincidence or not, as Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s influence waned this year, there was a spike in firing across the Indian border, a bomb attack on India’s Kabul embassy and diplomatic spats over Kashmir.
Now he has been forced to resign, India fears that relations between the two nuclear rivals could now get even worse.
New Delhi’s fear is that a weak civilian government in Islamabad will be unable to exert the same muscle that Musharraf did over Pakistan’s army and a powerful military spy agency, which India accuses of having a hand in most attacks on its soil..........
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C08%5C19%5Cstory_1 9-8-2008_pg7_13

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Utter rubbish is the norm these days at the Guardian
The US loses another ally in Musharraf
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/2008/08/the_us_loses_another_ally.htm l

[TonyGosling]

20 killed by US airstrike in Pakistan
http://week.manoramaonline.com/cgi-bin/MMOnline.dll/portal/ep/contentV iew.do?contentId=4587669&programId=1073754912&pageTypeId=1073754893&co ntentType=EDITORIAL&BV_ID=@@@
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Islamabad: Pakistani security officials said Saturday at least half a dozen Al Qaeda fighters were among more than 20 people killed in US missile strikes in Pakistan's tribal region.

Two Hellfire missiles fired by a drone aircraft hit a house in Mohammad Khel village, 25 km west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, late Friday.

Around half a dozen Al Qaeda members of Arab origin and several Taliban militants were invited to dinner by the owners of the house - two brothers identified as Daud Jan and Abdur Rehman - when the attack took place, a local security official said.

Both were Afghan nationals who had settled in the area 30 years ago. Daud Jan, his four sons and two nephews also died in the strike, the official said.

Army's chief spokesman Major General Athar Abbas confirmed that more than 20 people, mostly foreigners, were killed in the attack.

Scores of heavily armed Taliban militants sealed off the site and moved the bodies of Arabs to an undisclosed location.

The attack was the latest in an intensified US campaign of strikes in Pakistan's tribal region at Taliban and Al Qaeda militants, who launch cross-border attacks on international forces in Afghanistan.

Four days ago, two missiles fired from a US drone killed six people in North Waziristan, which borders Afghan province of Khost.

Islamabad, a key US ally in the fight against Muslim extremists, has openly criticized Washington for the strikes and insisted only its forces had right to target militants on its soil.

The US cross-border offensive against militants, which are currently taking place almost every other day, have also fuelled public anger and the Pakistani government is facing growing calls to abandon the alliance with the United States.

[TonyGosling]

Foreign Ministry: US Strikes In Pakistan “Helping the Terrorists”
http://news.antiwar.com/2008/10/10/foreign-ministry-us-strikes-in-paki stan-helping-the-terrorists/
Posted October 10, 2008

One day after a US drone strike in North Waziristan killed at least nine people, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry has issued a harshly worded condemnation of the repeated strikes, warning that they are undermining the war on terror and “helping the terrorists.”

Spokesman Mohammed Sadiq also cautioned that the attacks are “destabilizing the situation.” This echoes the sentiment from a report earlier this week that North Waziristan’s Taliban were behaving more aggressively in the wake of a previous US strike.

The US has launched a number of unilateral strikes in North and South Waziristan over the past month and a half, part of a reported “the gloves have come off” strategy in the region, seen by many officials as a key base for militants launching attacks across the porous border into southern Afghanistan................