Pakistani leaders were to dine at blast hotel, says minister

PAKISTAN: Pakistan\'s political and military leadership, including the president and prime minister, had been due to dine at the Marriott hotel on the night of the devastating bombing, a minister claimed yesterday as a shadowy Islamist group claimed responsibility for the suicide blast in the capital.A group calling itself Fedayeen Islam (Partisans of Islam) last night said it carried out the bombing on Saturday which killed at least 53 people, and demanded that Pakistan end its alliance with the US. Earlier in the day the Pakistani Taliban had denied they were behind the blast.The claim was made to the Pakistan-based correspondent of the Arabiya television network. He received a text message which asked him to call a number. When he did, a recording in English, with a South Asian accent, took responsibility for the bombing in the name of Fedayeen Islam.Rehman Malik, the chief of Pakistan\'s interior ministry, said a dinner hosted by the speaker of the parliament for the government and military top brass had been planned at the Marriott on Saturday, but security fears led to a change. \"At the eleventh hour the dinner was shifted to the prime minster\'s house, which saved Pakistan\'s entire military and political leadership,\" Malik said. Malik\'s revelation was disputed by the management of the hotel, which said no such booking had been made. Whatever the truth, the bombing appeared to signal a new phase in the militants\' war against the state, with the country feeling as if it is sliding towards chaos. \"Pakistan is teetering on the brink,\" said Farzana Shaikh, associate research fellow at Chatham House. \"There is a weak and deeply divided government and a disorientated army with no clear strategy.\"Many Pakistanis believe the sophistication and reach of extremist groups is the result of the army\'s past patronage of jihadists to fight proxy wars in Afghanistan and India. It is these groups, rather than the Pakistani Taliban in the north-west fringe, that may be most deeply linked to al-Qaida\'s agenda of global jihad. Groups such as Harkatul Jehadul Islami, led by Qari Saifullah, and Lashkar-e-Taiba appear to have gone rogue, having been nurtured by the ISI intelligence agency for years. There are fears that sympathisers in the ISI and army continue to help such groups, possibly providing the military explosives used in the Marriott blast.Benazir Bhutto accused Saifullah, once described by the former president Pervez Musharraf as al-Qaida\'s commander in Pakistan, of plotting to kill her just before she died, but he remains at liberty.\"Osama bin Laden\'s involvement with Pakistani militant organisations was very well established even before 9/11,\" said Muhammad Amir Rana, director of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, a thinktank in Islamabad. \"Al-Qaida usually operates through them in this region.\"Pakistan\'s president, Asif Ali Zardari, arrived in the US yesterday for talks with George Bush. Analysts believe he will try to convince Washington to ease the pressure on his government. Recent US missile strikes in the tribal area have stoked anti-US feeling in the country.There was further evidence of the disorder gripping Pakistan yesterday. A suicide bombing at a checkpoint in the valley of Swat, in the north-west, killed five police officers. The Afghan consul-general in Peshawar was taken hostage after his car was sprayed with bullets, killing his driver. Meanwhile, there were reports from the tribal territory that Pakistani troops and tribesmen had fired on two US army helicopters, forcing them to retreat.

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