Osama Introduced Nawaz Sharif To Saudi Royals: Ex-ISI Officer

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Osama introduced Nawaz Sharif to Saudi royals: ex-ISI officer

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/world/pakistan/Osama-introduced-Nawaz-Sharif-to-Saudi-royals-ex-ISI-officer/articleshow/4978856.cms

PTI 6 September 2009, 07:15pm IST

LAHORE: Osama bin Laden introduced Nawaz Sharif to the Saudi royal family in the late 1980s and during a meeting the former Premier had asked the

Al Qaida chief to provide employment to Pakistanis in Saudi Arabia, former ISI officer Khalid Khwaja claimed on Sunday.

Khwaja, who was close to Sharif in the late 1980s and early1990s, made the claim in an interview.

"During his first visit to Saudi Arabia as Chief Minister of Punjab in the late 1980s, no one from the royal family had given Sharif importance," he said.

"Thereafter, on Sharif's request, Osama bin Laden introduced him to the royal family and that helped him in getting closer to the Saudis," said Khwaja, who was a squadron leader in the Pakistan Air Force before joining the ISI in 1985.

"A close aide of Sharif family and I arranged at least five meetings between Sharif and bin Laden in Saudi Arabia.

"During a meeting with bin Laden as Prime Minister in the 1990s Sharif asked him to provide employment to Pakistanis in Saudi Arabia and undertake development projects in Pakistan," said Khwaja, who was dismissed from service by late military ruler Gen Zia-ul-Haq in 1988 for reportedly writing a letter in which he disagreed with Zia on certain policies.

Khwaja's disclosure came in the wake of a series of revelations by former ISI and Intelligence Bureau officials about payoffs to politicians by intelligence agencies and the role of the ISI in making or breaking governments.

"Nawaz Sharif had always despised and discarded his well-wishers and bin Laden, (former ISI chief) Hamid Gul and I are included in that long list," Khwaja said.

Khwaja said Sharif got annoyed with him when he asked him not to toe the US line while serving as premier. "Leave America and join hand with Islamic forces, I argued. Sharif said no, I cannot," he said.

During the past two weeks, Pakistani politics has been rocked by "revelations" made by a number of former army and intelligence officers, including former IB chief Brig (retired) Imtiaz Ahmed, commonly known as 'Billa' (cat), former ISI chief Lt Gen (retired) Asad Durrani and former army chief Gen (retired) Mirza Aslam Baig.

These revelations include the distribution of money among politicians by the ISI to form an alliance against slain former premier Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party in the early 1990s.

Officials have also claimed earlier reports that the Muttahida Quami Movement was involved in efforts to create a separate homeland called Jinnahpur were false.

This controversy erupted in 1992, when Sharif was the premier.

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Claim: Fmr. Pakistani PM had decades-long relationship with Osama bin Laden

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/09/09/pakistani-pm-bin-laden/

BY DANIEL TENCER
9/9/2009

Nawaz Sharif, a two-time former prime minister of Pakistan and current head of one of the country’s major political parties, has met with Osama bin Laden on numerous occasions, and it was in fact the al Qaeda leader who developed the relationship between Sharif and the Saudi royal family, says a former Pakistani intelligence official.

According to the Times of India, “bin Laden introduced Nawaz Sharif to the Saudi royal family in the late 1980s and during a meeting the former premier had asked the al Qaeda chief to provide employment to Pakistanis in Saudi Arabia.”

The claim was made by Khalid Khawaja, a former member of Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s spy agency. In a follow-up article published in the Times of India Wednesday, Khawaja adds that Sharif and bin Laden have met five times so far.

Sharif, who heads the Pakistani Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, denies the allegation, calling it “meaningless.”

For his part, Khawaja, the former ISI agent, says he has himself met with bin Laden more than 100 times, but “not after the 9/11 incident.”

Sharif served as prime minister of Pakistan twice, from 1990 to 1993, and again from 1997 to 1999, when he was overthrown in a military coup. It was during Sharif’s second term that Pakistan launched live tests of nuclear bombs, in reaction to India’s earlier tests.

In 2007, ABC News reported that Sharif “once received a million-dollar payoff from Osama Bin Laden as a thanks for not cracking down on the militant tribal areas in Pakistan’s northwest border province, according to a former member of bin Laden’s inner circle.”

Some historians have claimed for some time that there has been a link between Sharif and bin Laden. In their book, Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons, Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark claim that in 1989 Sharif plotted with bin Laden and others to assassinate then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Bhutto, who was assassinated in December, 2007, was seen as being among the most pro-Western of Pakistan’s politicians. No link between bin Laden, or the ISI, or Sharif, has been officially made in Bhutto’s killing. The UN launched a formal investigation into the assassination in July of this year.