INTO THE HOT ZONE

By Kevin Fedarko

No one, it seems, is completely safe in Pakistan. On March 11, police quietly captured six men in the Islamist stronghold of Peshawar who had talked by telephone to Ramzi Yousef just before the accused mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was himself arrested in Pakistan and quickly extradited to the U.S. The six were suspected of conspiring with Yousef in his skein of terrorist plots, but only after they had been questioned last week did Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto learn that she too had been a target of the terrorists.

According to an interview Bhutto gave to Reuter last Saturday, Yousef was busy scheming to assassinate her in the fall of 1993, seven months after the U.S. attack and shortly before she was elected Prime Minister. Armed with explosives, she recounted, he headed for her high-walled oceanside estate in Karachi intent on murder. But one of the devices detonated prematurely, injuring Yousef. Authorities did not catch up with him again until they nabbed him on Feb. 7 in Islamabad.

Bhutto's revelation, which could not be independently confirmed, heightened the popular perception that Pakistan is a growing haven for terrorists and criminals. The arrests of more alleged conspirators confirmed that the terrorist trail continues to span the breadth of the country, from the fundamentalist cells of Peshawar to the violence-riddled commercial capital of Karachi, where the U.S. State Department last week ordered the evacuation of all school-age children of American officials. U.S. agents are still hunting for Mir Aimal Kansi, wanted for the murders of two CIA officers in Langley, Virginia, two years ago. He is believed to be hiding in Baluchistan, another center of lawlessness.

Nevertheless, First Lady Hillary Clinton is scheduled to arrive in Islamabad on Saturday determined to turn toward gentler issues. Her two-day sojourn, part of a 10-day sweep through Southwest Asia, is intended, said President Clinton, to show that "there is truly a human dimension to politics, policy and diplomacy." Her agenda will take her and daughter Chelsea to schools, mosques and villages where she can cast a spotlight on issues of women, education and health care. The real diplomacy of repairing tattered U.S.-Pakistan relations will be left to Bhutto, who will come to the U.S. for two weeks in April.

But even a determined Hillary Clinton will find it hard to turn attention away from Pakistan's perils. She arrives little more than two weeks after three U.S. consulate workers were ambushed in Karachi and two of them slain. Some Pakistani officials theorize that the killings could have been meant as a warning against her trip. Pakistani authorities no doubt hope the latest arrests will help calm the atmosphere, even though there is no connection so far between Yousef's associates and the murders. To improve security, in the past week hundreds of militants have been detained.

No matter how much Bhutto's government tries to crack down on troublemakers, though, Mrs. Clinton is visiting a country that has grown bitterly anti-American since the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989. Once-moderate Pakistan resents being left awash in drug and arms traffic--and trained Islamic fighters--built up with U.S. support during the Western campaign to oust the Soviet army from Afghanistan. In 1990 the U.S. Congress passed a resolution denying all economic and military aid to Pakistan over suspicions that it was developing nuclear weapons. Three years later, Washington threatened to place Pakistan on the list of states supporting terrorism--a move that would have cut the country off from most outside investment and lending. Bhutto's recent efforts to improve relations by cooperating with the U.S. on terror and drug investigations have outraged even moderate Pakistanis, who felt their government kowtowed to Washington by extraditing Ramzi Yousef within 24 hours of his arrest. Wrote commentator Ayaz Amir in the respected national newsmagazine the Herald: "The U.S. may do as it pleases in Pakistan--cut off aid, pressure it on its nuclear program, twist its arms over the drug trade, use it as it did during the heady days of the Afghan jihad--and then discard it like a used lemon.''

In the streets, anti-U.S. anger spawns wild rumors that many accept as truth. Last fall, Pakistani journalists called the State Department looking to confirm rumors that the Navy had a fleet offshore with thousands of Marines ready to invade.

Such stories would be merely amusing if the country did not have some zealots ready to vent their wrath on the U.S. with bombs and machine guns. No matter how smoothly the Hillary Clinton and Bhutto visits proceed, they cannot deter those who are most determined to do damage.

--Reported by Gerald Bourke/Islamabad and Jefferson Penberthy/Karachi

With reporting by GERALD BOURKE/ISLAMABAD AND JEFFERSON PENBERTHY/KARACHI