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Pakistani Taliban targeted Danes after cartoons: officials
2008-06-03
Pakistani officials said Tuesday an attack on the Danish embassy was likely a one-off linked to cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed and will not impact the new government's talks with the Taliban. Investigators believe Taliban militants based in a tribal region on the Afghan border were responsible for Monday's suicide attack, which killed at least six people including a Danish national, a government official said. Police have found skull fragments at the scene which confirm that the bombing was a suicide attack, a tactic favoured by Taliban rebels who have been blamed for a wave of blasts in Pakistan in the past year, officials said. But the senior government official told AFP on condition of anonymity: "It appears to be a one-off attack which has little relevance to the ongoing negotiations between Taliban and the authorities." Pakistani Taliban militants agreed to peace talks with the government after parties allied to US-backed anti-terror ally President Pervez Musharraf were trounced in elections in February. The United States, NATO and Afghanistan have all expressed doubts over the talks. "This attack was not born out of the events in the country or the region, rather it was part of global outrage in the Islamic world against publishing blasphemous cartoons," the official said. Danish newspapers first published the controversial cartoons in 2005, sparking violent protests in Pakistan and other Muslim countries. Several dailies reprinted the sketches in February this year. In Copenhagen, Denmark's foreign minister Per Stig Moeller led a sombre memorial to victims of the attack, observing a minute of silence with staff under a Danish red-and-white flag flying at half mast. "The terror will be conquered. We will not give up," Moeller was quoted as saying as the ceremony began. He insisted that Denmark was "not without friends. The world is showing us solidarity." One Danish citizen of Pakistani origin and two Pakistani employees were among the dead in the blast that badly damaged the embassy and the offices of a UN-backed aid agency, officials in Copenhagen said. Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda extremist network has made recent calls for attacks on Danish targets because of the cartoons. A spokesman for Pakistan's Taliban militants said on Monday that he had no information about the blast. He was not immediately available for comment on Tuesday. The top Pakistani Taliban commander, Baitullah Mehsud, has denied any links to Al-Qaeda and accusations by the former government that he orchestrated the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto in December. Security officials said a stolen car with fake diplomatic plates was used in the bombing. The bomb contained at least 25 kilogrammes (55 pounds) of the same type of explosive used in a suicide bombing at the Federal Investigation Agency's offices in Lahore in March, which was blamed on the Taliban, they said. The preparations for the Danish blast were "meticulous, similar to previous attacks by Taliban linked to Al-Qaeda" and involved a car stolen from the northwestern city of Peshawar, the security official said. However the attack itself was "poorly executed" and the bomb went off several metres (yards) from the gate of the embassy, they said. Security officials warned however that the attack showed the Taliban network remained intact and exposed the problems that lie ahead "in case of reopening of hostilities between the government and the militants." US President George W. Bush condemned the bombing and offered his condolences to the victims, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said late Monday. Pakistan has been a key ally in Washington's "war on terror" since 2001.
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