The Hindu : Musharraf eyes `Predators'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jun 28, 2003

International

International

Musharraf eyes `Predators'

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON JUNE 27. The Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, continues to hope that Washington will have F-16s in the hardware list even though the Bush administration has made it clear that it will not have them as a part of any military package to Pakistan.

Gen. Musharraf has added to his list Predator, the unmanned aerial vehicles, something the United States has not exported thus far.

In the view of Gen. Musharraf the Predators will be useful for intelligence-gathering in the pursuit of the al-Qaeda.. "Locate them (the al-Qaeda terrorists) with your satellites; use your UAVs; give us the UAVs. Give us the eyes and ears and we will act," the Pakistani President said in an interview to the The Washington Times.

The Predators come in two forms and have been extensively used in Afghanistan to hunt down the Taliban and the al-Qaeda. One version of the Predator Drone is limited only to intelligence gathering; the second version can fire Hellfire Missiles.

Gen. Musharraf has been persistent in the F-16s issue playing it up even before his arrival here. In response to a pointed question on the F-16s at Camp David, the U.S. President, George W. Bush, said bluntly that the F-16s "won't" be a part of the economic and security package that is being assembled for Pakistan.

The much talked about $3 billion package is evenly split between economic and security-cum-military assistance. "I won't reiterate the requirement for F-16s. It has been so many times. For the man on the street, it is either F-16s or Kashmir," Gen. Musharraf said.

Pakistan purchased 40 F-16 jets in the 1980s and additional purchases to the tune of about 60 jets were blocked by an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act. But the Clinton administration reimbursed what Pakistan had put down for the fighters. What Gen. Musharraf is also saying is that if the United States were to deny his request for sophisticated equipment, Pakistan will look elsewhere for the same.

"So we obviously will look everywhere to maintain the strategy of minimum deterrence. Wherever it may be in the world, we will look for it," he said.

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