Bin Laden more popular than Musharraf in Pakistan: poll
Pakistan's newest threat: Army officer turns suicide bomber
FIRST STORY---
ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is more popular in Pakistan than President Pervez Musharraf, according to a poll released Wednesday.
Nearly three-quarters of Pakistanis also oppose unilateral US military action against Islamic insurgents in Pakistan's tribal areas, said the poll for Terror Free Tomorrow, a US-based organisation.
The survey "may help explain why Osama bin Laden remains at large in Pakistan and why both Al-Qaeda and the Taliban have regrouped there," the group said in a statement.
It said it polled 1,044 people across Pakistan between August 18 and August 29.
Military ruler Musharraf, facing the biggest political crisis of his eight years in power and increasing pressure from Washington to tackle extremism, is the biggest in from the poll.
It said his approval rating was 38 percent behind 46 percent for bin Laden, the architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks who is believed to be hiding on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Bin Laden's ratings jumped to 70 percent in the Islamist-ruled North West Frontier Province.
SECOND STORY ---
According to reliable sources in the local police, a Pashtun army officer belonging to the elite Special Services Group, whose younger sister was reportedly among the 300 girls killed during the Pakistan Army's commando raid on the Lal Masjid in Islamabad between July 10 and 13, blew himself up during dinner at the SSG's headquarters mess at Tarbela Ghazi, 100 km south of Islamabad, on the night of September 13, killing 19 other officers.
The incident coincided with United States Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte's visit to Kabul and Islamabad for talks with leaders and officials of the two governments.
According to the same sources, the Pashtun army officer belonged to South Waziristan, but Tarbela Ghazi is not located in the tribal belt.
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