New Delhi, October 20
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf survived a coup attempt a fortnight ago shortly after his return from the US, Hong Kong-based Asia Time Online has reported.

The web newspaper quoted contacts in Rawalpindi, where the Pakistan military is based, as saying that more than 40 persons, most of those middle-ranking Pakistan Air Force (PAF) officers, had been arrested so far and more arrests were likely. Civilian arrests include a son of a serving brigadier in the Pakistan Army.

The conspiracy was discovered through the naivety of a PAF officer who this month used a cell phone to activate a high-tech rocket aimed at the President's residence in Rawalpindi.

The rocket was recovered, and its activating mechanism revealed the officer's telephone number. His arrest led to the other arrests. Other rockets were then recovered from various high security zones, including the headquarters of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Islamabad, Asia Times Online said in its Karachi-datelined report posted.

The Pakistan Government has so far not admitted that the conspiracy, uncovered in the wake of the Ayub Park explosion about a fortnight ago, was a failed coup attempt.

President Musharraf himself has commented on the incident thus: “The perpetrators were all religious extremists, perhaps linked to a group having contacts with Al- Qaida, but they were not fully trained in carrying out such a task”.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao went on record to say that the arrested people had links with Al-Qaida and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) and had visited Afghanistan many times.

The conspiracy has come to light in the wake of a sensational comment by Gen Musharraf in the US wherein he claimed that former ISI officials were supporting the Taliban. He also stated that he had sent instructions to the Director ---General of the ISI to check on top officials, including former ISI chief Hamid Gul and retired Colonel Ameer Sultan (known as Colonel Imam). The latter is considered as the founding father of the Taliban movement. He was Pakistan's consul-general in Herat in western Afghanistan when the Taliban emerged in the mid-1990s.

Gen Musharraf also instructed that a list be compiled of all retired officers who had been involved in any significant intelligence operations and who were suspected of still being sympathetic towards the Taliban.

Asia Times Online quoted a former ISI official, Khalid Khawaja as saying that:“This is just one glimpse of upcoming events as a result of Musharraf's pro-American policies, which are in contrast to the thinking pattern of Pakistan's state institutions.”

Mr Khawaja had gone to Afghanistan after his forced retirement and fought alongside Osama bin Laden against Soviet Russia in the 1980s. He features on Gen Musharraf's list mentioned above.