Britain treating Pak as 'whipping boy,': Diplomat

Asking Britain to "search their own house," a senior Pakistan diplomat has accused it of treating Pakistan as a "whipping boy" while failing to check home-grown terrorists.

The comments came in wake of the recent conviction of three British Muslims in a plot to blow up transatlantic jets with home-made liquid bombs, with the plot having strong links to al-Qaeda cells in Pakistan.

A senior Pakistani diplomat told the Guardian newspaper that the youth were "third-generation British... born, raised and taught in Britain" and UK should take "responsibility". "Sometimes for our British friends the truth is bitter. We have somehow turned out to be a whipping boy, there is a long history to that," the unnamed diplomat said.

"The British need to search their own house. Britain has to take responsibility and they have to look into the issues which are driving these youth to extremism -– they weren't born and bought up in Pakistan," he said.

A court on Monday convicted Pakistani-origin Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 28, and Assad Sarwar, 29, of conspiring to activate bombs disguised as soft drinks. British media reported that evidence presented in court showed that al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan provided key knowledge for the co-ordinated attacks intended to surpass the horror of 9/11.

Pakistani officals have accused Britain of failing to do enough to tackle home-grown terrorists, maintaining they were falsely being blamed for harbouring extremists plotting to attack the UK, the paper said. The diplomat also said that it was Pakistani intelligence that had tipped the UK off about the plot, hence saving 1,500 lives aboard seven transatlantic jetliners, it said.

Counter-terrorism officials in the UK believe the plot was put together on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.