Osama Bin Laden met Nawaz Sharif 5 times, Osama dead
Local Friday, September 11th, 2009Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif has met al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden five times, says a former official of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), a claim hotly denied by Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
Speaking in ARY news programme “Eleventh Hour”, the former ISI official and now chairman Defence of Human Rights organisation Khalid Khwaja claimed he had arranged meetings between bin Laden and Nawaz Sharif on bin Laden’s request and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief had held five meetings with the al-Qaida chief so far.
“I challenge the deniers of such meetings and can present solid evidences in this respect,” Khwaja was quoted as saying by ARY News on Wednesday.
He said hopefully Nawaz Sharif would not “tell a lie” in this regard.
He said he had met the al-Qaida chief more than a hundred times “but not after the 9/11 incident”.
However, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz has termed the claims of the head of Defence of Human Rights organisation as baseless.
The claims by Khalid Khwaja regarding the meetings between Nawaz Nawaz “>Sharif and Osama bin Laden were “meaningless”, the party’s information secretary Ahsan Iqbal told ARY news. Nawaz Sharif met Osama five times: Ex-ISI official IANS 9 September 2009, 12:26pm IST
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has said that al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden is dead, but has sought more international aid to expand
military operations against Taliban, in areas where Americans believe he may be hiding.
Asserting that his government was fighting the militants with determination, Zardari said these efforts were hampered by what he called lack of resources.
In an interview to BBC to mark his first year in office as President, Zardari’s main emphasis was on Pakistan’s ailing economy and to make a pitch for much more enhanced assistance from the West.
“If the world’s armies and the world’s budgets cannot look after (the Afghan) side of the border, give me more time and give me the resources that I need and we will deliver,” he said.
He was replying to questions when Pakistan would act against Taliban militants based on its soil who carried out cross-border attacks against foreign troops in Afghanistan.
On Osama, Pakistan President, however, did not put forward any evidence or details in support of his claim that world’s most wanted terrorist was no longer alive. Even earlier Zardari had put forward the same claim, which was not accepted by Washington.
His remarks on Osama being dead run contrary to American belief that al-Qaida chief is alive and is hiding in Pakistan’s restive tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Zardari claims Osama bin Laden is dead
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on Sep 11 2009. Filed under