CIA-RDP96-00789R000401020011-3

Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R000401020011-3
Washington
Post
MONDAY, AUGUST 22, 1988 A23
U.S. Experts
Join Probe
Of Zia Crash
By Stuart Auerbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 21
-A team of American specialists
today joined the investigation into
the crash of a military plane that
killed President Mohammed Zia ul-
Haq, some of Pakistan's top Army
officers and the U.S. ambassador
last week.
Embassy officials said the inves-
tigation will take many weeks and
has been hampered by conflicting
accounts from residents near the
eastern Pakistan town of Bahawal-
pur, where Zia's C130 crashed and
burned Wednesday.
U.S. officials here have played
down assertions by the new interim
Pakistani president, Ghulam Ishaq
Khan, that the crash was an act of
sabotage.
[State
Department
sources in Washington said Sunday
that there are increasing indications
that the crash was caused by acci-
dent rather than by a bomb or other
form of sabotage, Washington Post
staff writer Don O' perdorfer re-
ported. i
There has been widespread spec-
ulation in the press here that the
crash was caused by a bomb planted
aboard the plane, perhaps in crates
of mangoes that were reported to
have been loaded at the last minute
as a gift to Zia.
Pakistani officials invited an Amer-
ican team of crash specialists, drawn
together by the U.S. Defense De-
partment, to assist in the investiga-
tion. Many of the specialists who
joined the probe today work for the
U.S. government, while others are.
employed by the Lockheed Corp.,
which manufactures C130s.
According to preliminary infor-
mation, embassy officials said it ap-
peared that the pilot was trying to
return to the civilian airport at Ba-
hawalpur when the plane crashed.
But reports from witnesses dif-
fered on whether the plane explod-
ed in the air or burst into flames
when it hit the ground. Witnesses
have provided both accounts to
Pakistani investigators, U.S. offi-
cials said.
While Ishaq Khan, a longtime
Pakistani bureaucrat who as Senate
chairman was the constitutional
successor to Zia as president, said
the Pakistani government sus-
pected sabotage, he acknowledged
that it had no proof and declined to
speculate on who would have
wanted to kill Zia.
Senior Pakistani officials familia,
with the probe of the crash said in !-
vestigators were checking six diffez!
ent groups for possible involvement .*
These sources said a prime suspect
was the Afghan secret service Khad,
which opposed Zia's support for Af-
ghan guerrillas fighting the Soviet-
backed Kabul government.
The sources said those also un-
der investigation were extremist
pro-Iranian Shiite Moslems, sup-
porters of five Palestinians sen-
tenced to death in Pakistan for a hi-
jacking, a religious sect Zia had
moved against . and nationalist
groups fighting the Army in Sind
province. Investigators have also
not ruled out the possible involve-
ment of disgruntled military offi-
cers, the sources said.
Also killed in the crash were U.S.
ambassador Arnold L. Raphel and
brigadier general Herbert Wassom,
the head of the military assistance
advisory group at the U.S. Embas-
sy. [Secretary of State George P.
Approved For Release 2000/08/08tz thptichdies to the
United States on this Yu0089R000401020011-3
from Zia's funeral in Islamabad.]