India helps USA against Bin Laden

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India Shares Militant Data With U.S.

By NEELESH MISRA
.c The Associated Press


NEW DELHI, India (AP) - Maps, phone transcripts, video and photographs -
including one of former President Clinton that was used for target practice -
show how Islamic militant leaders run training camps across Pakistan and in
southern Afghanistan, India says.

India has given FBI investigators documents from its store of intelligence on
suspected terrorist camps, a collection culled over four years, officials
said Sunday.

President Bush has threatened retaliation against the terrorists behind the
attacks on New York and Washington, as well as those who harbor them.

A top Indian intelligence official told The Associated Press the secret
documents were evidence that Islamic militants - including Osama bin Laden,
the main suspect in the U.S. attacks - finance guerrilla groups and training
camps.

Video clips show members of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and other groups
firing at enlarged photographs of Clinton during shooting practice, the
intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.

Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is among a dozen Islamic guerrilla groups - most based in
Pakistan - that are fighting to free the Himalayan region of Kashmir from
India. Since gaining independence in 1947, Pakistan and India have fought
three wars, two of them over the mostly Muslim region divided between them.

The training camps India pinpointed for U.S. investigators are located in
Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, in the Pakistani hinterland of Punjab and
Baluchistan, and in provinces on the Afghanistan frontier, the intelligence
official said.

The camps within Afghanistan are in Khost and the historic southern city of
Kandahar, according to interrogation reports of arrested militants who said
they were trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Intelligence officials said there are now fewer than 120 training camps and
that they shift, especially when there is a focus upon them. For this reason,
the Indian officials said, satellite tracking is not as useful as ``human
intelligence,'' which India also offered.

Pakistan denies supporting terrorism, and said it would cooperate with the
U.S. effort to find the perpetrators of last week's attacks.

Pakistan's government calls Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and other groups based in
Pakistan and fighting in Kashmir ``freedom fighters,'' not terrorists.
Pakistan supports their cause but gives them no material aid, the government
says.

India also has accused the Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen, another Pakistan-based
militant group, of abducting six foreign tourists in Kashmir in 1995 and
carrying out the Christmas Eve hijacking of an Indian Airlines jetliner in
1999.

While investigating the hijacking, Indian officials gained a lot of
information about the militant groups and bin Laden's connection to them, a
senior Indian security official said. The official called
Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen a member of bin Laden's international front for jihad -
holy war - against Christians and Jews.

The evidence provided to the American investigators includes transcripts of
conversations between militant groups; descriptions and locations of training
camps; and photographs and video footage of training camps, intelligence
officials said.

Washington had not yet approached New Delhi for permission to use Indian
airspace or refueling facilities in the case of airstrikes on Afghanistan,
the senior intelligence official. But both sides are in close contact, he
said.

AP-NY-09-17-01 0016EDT

Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.