Pak Wants No part In An Attack on Iraq: Musharraf
NEW YORK, September 13 (PNS): President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan on Wednesday said that an American decision to attack Iraq would inflame Islamic extremism in his country and across the region and that therefore “we would not like to be involved” in it.
Speaking in an interview with The New York Times during a weeklong visit to the United States, he said he would caution President Bush, whom he is to meet Thursday after a United Nations General Assembly session, to seek the consensus of the international community and of Muslim nations before starting military operations against Iraq.
He expressed concern that any expansion of war in the region might undermine the allied campaign to stabilize Afghanistan and strengthen its central government.
An assassination attempt last week against Hamid Karzai, the Afghan leader, set off a spike in anxiety levels among coalition forces and allies supporting the new leadership.
“The operation needs to be taken to its logical end,” he said. **“It needs to be culminated with government established over the whole of Afghanistan. Leaving it half there would be extremely dangerous.” **
General Musharraf defending his decision last month to amend the Pakistani Constitution unilaterally, expand his control over the country and limit any challenges from former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif said his decisions would promote democratic development.
An opinion the White House does not share but was not willing to criticize too sharply, an administration official responded.
Given Pakistan’s crucial role in securing Afghanistan’s future and preventing the spread of terrorism in the region, Mr. Bush is expected today to gently criticize the democratic reversals that took place in Pakistan this summer while emphasizing Washington’s overall support for the military government, the Times reported.
General Musharraf said Mr. Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against hostile nations or organizations armed with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons could incite India to move against Pakistan.
“There is a possibility that India could take a lead from this theory of pre-emption,” he said. “And they may undertake an adventurous act. But I would like to hasten to add that here the situation is different. Pakistan is not Iraq, and India is not the United States.” In other words, he added, **“they’d better not try it.” **
He warned that tension between the two nuclear-armed adversaries remains high in Kashmir. “We are killing each other almost on a daily basis,” he said.
“Therefore the danger remains explosive,” he said.
In discussing the potential American campaign against Iraq, General Musharraf indicated that it was a highly sensitive issue in Pakistan’s domestic politics in advance of parliamentary elections next month.
“Pakistan is facing problems in its own region,” he said. **“We have too much on our plate, too much on our hands, internally, domestically, and on our western border, and eastern border with India, Kashmir. We would not like to be involved in anything more than this.”
He said the main direction for American policy in the region ought to be conflict resolution, including the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. He did not say this was a precondition for war in Iraq, but the political risks were substantial, he indicated.
“Tensions are high,” he said. “In the Islamic world and in the Middle East especially, people are seeing a U.S. role maybe biased towards Israel. so under these circumstances, undertaking an operation against another country, an Arab country and Muslim country, will certainly have negative repercussions.”
In Afghanistan, he indicated that the hunt for Osama bin Laden might not be as important as strengthening government control over the countryside. “My hunch is that more chances are that he is dead,” he said.
Like some American officials, General Musharraf cited the clear intelligence that Mr. bin Laden in December entered the Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan, where he and his 200 or so guards were subjected to intense bombing, and that there had been radio silence ever since.
“I don’t think we have searched every cave, so therefore one presumes that he may have been killed in one of those caves,” he said, adding that Mr. bin Laden’s kidney condition, which requires dialysis, is a factor in judging his survival chances on the run.
General Musharraf defended his government’s decision to ban Ms. Bhutto, now living in exile in London and charged with corruption, from taking part in parliamentary elections. He said keeping her off the ballot was part of his effort to promote the emergence of new political leaders, though opposition leaders accuse him of manipulation to protect his hold on power.
Pressed on how his actions could be seen as the promotion of democracy, he said, “I am trying to introduce real democracy into Pakistan, the essence of democracy.” Referring to Pakistan’s turbulent history of coups and ousters, he said that **“democracy has never existed” **in the country, because almost no leader had governed to the end of his term.
In Pakistan, he said, “any civilian government has always misgoverned, has always looted and plundered.” He suggested that “memories are short” about the conditions under which he took power in 1999. “We were being almost declared a terrorist state, and we were going to default on our loans.” he said. “It was being said that Pakistan was a failed state.” **
