I know nothing of this publication and was wondering if anyone else had read similar reports elsewhere. The essence of the article (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HI08Df03.html) is that Islamabad has reached an agreement with Pakistani Taliban:
With a truce between the Pakistani Taliban and Islamabad now in place, the Pakistani government is in effect reverting to its pre-September 11, 2001, position in which it closed its eyes to militant groups allied with al-Qaeda and clearly sided with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

While the truce has generated much attention, a more significant development is an underhand deal between pro-al-Qaeda elements and Pakistan in which key al-Qaeda figures will either not be arrested or those already in custody will be set free. This has the potential to sour Islamabad's relations with Washington beyond the point of no return.
While I've generally held Pakistan's contribution to the fight against terrorists suspect, this seems a negative turn on the diplomatic side at the very least.
Pakistan, the leading light in the United States' "war on terror" and a "most important" non-North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally, is returning to the heady times of before September 11 when it could dabble without restraint in regional affairs, and this at a time when Afghanistan is boiling.

Dear Thormir:

A decent BBC analysis of that deal can be found here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5320692.stm

I don't know that Musharraf had much choice; local tribesmen who supporting the Taleban were increasingly attacking the military and the violence was spiralling out of control, and he faces growing unrest among his own people for his pro-US policies. The agreement at least gives him something to work with regarding controlling movement across the border (and also, gives him the cover to 'turn a blind eye' to Taleban activity in the region as well). I agree that this is bad for the US, assuming that our current administration even actually cares about the Taleban and events on the Afghan/Pakistan border (where bin Laden has been supposed to have been hiding for some time) in their quagmire of fever dreams about 'fighting Islamofascism' like a blindfolded kid swinging at a pinata...

Regards,
Nydia

"Ally in the war on terror" is codespeak for "cooperates with our oil pipeline project" as applied to that region. Looks like the money wasn't going to cover a potential local insurgency, though. Will be interesting to see the administration response, which I suspect will be muted at best.

It's sad that these warlords have such consolidated power that they can tell the centralized government what to do. Not because the people want them to, but because ethey have the sheer force of arms.
And even a blindfolded kid swinging at a pinata hits the target better than someone that won't even pick up the stick...
And I haven't heart too much in the mainstream media about this pipeline project, although I know through various websites and bloggers that it apperently exists....

Yeah, you'd think somebody in the media would say something about the pipeline project, given it's why we wanted "regime change" in Afghanistan as early as 2000. Camp Bondsteel isn't there to fight the Taliban, I'm fairly convinced the current administration has no real intent to capture bin Ladin unless they're saving it as an 11th hour publicity stunt depending on who gets elected in 2008 (a la Reagan's backchannel negotiations with Iran in 80).

Actually it was the Carter administrtion that negotiated the release of the hostages from Iran. The Carter administration never stopped negotiating to get the hostages released.

If you want to get Reagan for something you can look to the bombing of the Marines at the Beirut airport in '83. We had Hezbollah red handed for that attack and we did nothing but cut and run.

I was refering to the corraborated admissions that Reagan, or people on his behalf, were negotiating with Iran outside of the official US diplomatic channels to get the hostage release delayed until Reagan was in office. The ignominity of our response to the Beirut bombings was an entirely separate bit of national shame.