Pakistan News and Discussion-8

[Guest]

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Bush deflects charge that Pakistan threatened
MSNBC News Services
WASHINGTON - With Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf standing at his side, President Bush President said Friday he was “taken aback” by Musharraf's allegation that Washington threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age if it did not cooperate in the fight against terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“The first I heard of it was when I read about it in the newspaper today,” Bush said when asked at a press conference about whether Musharraf’s allegations were true. “I guess I was taken aback by the harshness of the words.”

“I don’t now of any (such) conversation,” he added.

Musharraf, for his part, refused to comment, saying he was not allowed to elaborate given a contract he has for an upcoming book he has written.

On other issues, Musharraf said a peace treaty between his government and tribes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border is not meant to support the Taliban.

He said news reports had mischaracterized the deals. “The deal is not at all with the Taliban. This deal is against the Taliban. This deal is with the tribal elders,” Musharraf said.

Said Bush: “I believe him.”

He said that Musharaff had looked him in the eye and vowed that “the tribal deal is intended to reject the Talibanization of the people and that there won’t be a Taliban and there wont be al-Aqaida (in Pakistan).”

<b>What did Armitage say?</b>
Earlier Friday, the White House said it was not U.S. policy to threaten Pakistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Richard Armitage, who was deputy secretary of state at the time, had denied warning Musharraf that the United States would bomb his country if it did not cooperate with the U.S. campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Musharraf, in an interview with CBS News’ magazine show “60 Minutes,” to air on Sunday, said that after the Sept. 11 attacks, Armitage had told Pakistan’s intelligence director, “’Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age.’”

Snow said he did not know what Musharraf had been told but that U.S. policy was to seek Musharraf’s cooperation.

“U.S. policy was not to issue bombing threats. U.S. policy was to say to President Musharraf: ’We need you to make a choice,’” Snow said.

As for what Armitage said to the Pakistanis: “I don’t know,” Snow said. “This could have been a classic failure to communicate. I just don’t know.”

Armitage told CNN on Thursday that he never threatened to bomb Pakistan, wouldn’t say such a thing and didn’t have the authority to do it. Armitage said he did have a tough message for Pakistan, saying the Muslim nation was either “with us or against us,” according to CNN. Armitage said he didn’t know how his message was recounted so differently to Musharraf.

The Pakistani leader, whose remarks were distributed to the media by CBS, said he felt insulted.

“I think it was a very rude remark,” he told reporter Steve Kroft. But Musharraf said he reacted responsibly. “One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation and that is what I did,” he said.

<b>Relations with the Taliban</b>
Before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Pakistan was one of the only countries in the world to maintain relations with the Taliban, which was harboring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, and many Pakistanis were sympathetic with the neighboring Islamic state.

But within days of the attacks Musharraf cut his government’s ties to the Taliban regime and cooperated with U.S. efforts to track and capture al-Qaida and Taliban forces that sought refuge in Pakistan.

The official 9/11 commission report on the attacks and their aftermath, based largely on government documents, said U.S. national security officials focused immediately on securing Pakistani cooperation as they planned a response.

Documents showed Armitage met the Pakistani ambassador and the visiting head of Pakistan’s military intelligence service in Washington on Sept. 13 and asked Pakistan to take seven steps.

They included ending logistical support for bin Laden and giving the United States blanket overflight and landing rights for military and intelligence flights.

The report did not discuss any threat the United States may have made, but it said Musharraf agreed to all seven U.S. requests the same day.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said that “we gave them a list of things we wanted Pakistan to do, which essentially required Pakistan to completely reverse its policy with respect to the Taliban.”

Musharraf “saw the wisdom in the decision he took,” Powell said.

<b>'Ludicrous' demands</b>
Musharraf said in the CBS interview he was irked by U.S. demands that Pakistan turn over its border posts and bases for the U.S. military to use.

He said some demands were “ludicrous,” including one insisting he suppress domestic expression of support for terrorism against the United States. “If somebody’s expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views,” Musharraf said.

With Taliban fighters still fighting in Afghanistan and statements by the Afghan government that Pakistan must do more to crack down on militants in its rugged border area, the issue is again a sensitive one between Islamabad and Washington.

Musharraf reacted with displeasure to comments by Bush on Wednesday that if he had firm intelligence bin Laden was in Pakistan, he would issue the order to go into that country.

“We wouldn’t like to allow that. We’d like to do that ourselves,” Musharraf told a news conference.

Musharraf’s comments came days ahead of the publication by New York-based Free Press of his memoir “In the Line of Fire.” Advance copies of the memoir have not been released to the media for review before its Sept. 25 publication.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->